Income tax is set to generate £700m more for the Scottish Government next year than previously expected, but only a small portion of this is from the hike for high-earners announced in this week’s...
Higher-than-expected public sector pay and meeting spending commitments will create a £1.5bn gap in Scotland’s 2024-25 budget, the Fraser of Allander Institute has warned.
Unexpected tax growth in Scotland was not enough to avoid the removal of £390m of block grant funding in 2024-25, the nation’s fiscal commission has said.
Reducing borrowing restrictions and removing limits on reserve use will give the Scottish Government more flexibility to respond to challenges arising from forecasting mistakes.
More flexible council funding and the understanding that services will be run locally “by default” are the cornerstones of the Scottish Government’s new deal with its local authorities.
Plans to sharply lower the level of child poverty in Scotland will fail without significant investment from the Scottish government, experts have warned.
Scottish council leaders have claimed the latest local government pay offer is fair and recognises the importance of the workforce, despite opposition from unions.
Scotland spent less than it might have done in the first two years of Covid-19, and the nation’s spending watchdog has urged public bodies to use the lessons learned from the pandemic to help plan...
The Scottish Government will be unable to meet its net zero ambitions without reforms to departmental governance and oversight, an influential think-tank has warned.
Inflation has left local authorities in Scotland with their “most difficult budget-setting context seen for many years” and could require millions of pounds of service provision being cut, the...
The Scottish Government has outlined plans to increase taxes on high earners and provide more funding to local authorities next year to help manage pressures stemming from the cost-of-living crisis.
The Scottish Government must close the “major implementation gap” between policy ambitions and delivery to help ensure financial stability, the national watchdog has said.
The impact of inflation and the fallout from the UK government’s “calamitous” mini-budget mean Scottish ministers have had to double budget cuts this year.
Plans to centralise care in Scotland into a national body could cost “significantly” more than current forecasts, and the devolved government has not yet assessed the full cost of the transition, the...
“Power grab” proposals to centralise social care services in Scotland could see thousands of staff moved to a national body, and the plans face searing criticism from council leaders and unions.
Pressures stemming from the cost-of-living crisis and hitting future targets on net zero have been tipped to be key talking points at Public Finance Scotland this week.
Scottish ministers have tabled around £500m of cuts to planned revenue and capital spending due to “enormous strains” on the devolved administration’s 2022-23 budget.