Proposals to increase council tax rates in Scotland will impact the highest value properties and make the levy less regressive, ministers and local leaders have said.
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.
The Scottish government has succeeded in expanding subsidised early learning and childcare places, but the sector faces risks from budget, workforce and market pressures, Audit Scotland has warned.
The Scottish government will fail to capitalise on early progress to reduce criminal backlogs without additional funding and improvements to the workforce, the national watchdog has said.
Rising demand and an over-reliance on reserves have put the financial sustainability of Scottish care boards at risk without significant reforms, the national watchdog has warned.
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...
Delaying its controversial flagship social care policy gives the Scottish Government time to engage with councils over the reforms, local leaders have said.
Scotland’s largest teaching union has rejected a pay offer it labelled insufficient, and signalled that planned strikes will continue until a better offer is tabled.
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.
Scottish Government proposals for increasing taxes on higher earners to fund more generous benefits are more progressive than the rest of the UK, but are at risk of being avoided, the Institute for...
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 should be given the resources and powers to dictate how levelling up and post-Brexit development funding is allocated, a senior minister has said.
Reforming local taxation to include surcharges on out-of-town businesses could help to arrest decades of decline in Scottish town centres, MSPs have said.
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.
