James Mitchell, from the Academy of Government at the University of Edinburgh, summarises a presentation he delivered to CoSLA on local government finance.

Author: James Mitchell, University of Edinburgh

Date: 7 July 2015

Reforming local government finance is fraught with dangers and there has been an understandable tendency to stick with a sub-optimal system for fear of unintended and unforeseeable problems that will arise with reform.

A more integrated approach to service delivery needs to take account of both vertical and horizontal linkages, i.e. central-local integration and integration across functional services. Protecting one area of current spending can only be achieved either by increasing revenues or cutting elsewhere.

Read the post on the What Works Scotland blog