West Lothian councillor urges Scottish Government to build on existing local authority structure
She urged the Holyrood not to “rip it all up and start again”
The Scottish Government is being called on to build on existing improvements to the local authority structure rather than ”rip it all and start again”.
Linlithgow Lib Dem councillor Sally Pattle echoed Lib Dem policy when she showed support for public sector reform. But she called on Holyrood to build on successes instead of sweeping the existing infrastructure aside.
The councillor said wholescale reforms were being planned on the basis of a three month “engagement window”. She added: “There’s no information on how this engagement is to be carried out and with whom.”
The Scottish Government has said it wants to hear from councils and unions about planned sweeping changes creating a two tier service of nine regional authorities and around 160 local community authorities.
Councillor Pattle told a recent meeting of West Lothian’s Executive that: “new proposals make no mention of the potential impact on the workforce, no mention of the outcomes of the past nine years of the Local Government Review or Democracy Matters.”
She said: “No-one is arguing that public sector reform isn’t needed. But this latest missive from the Scottish Government has come from nowhere.
“It’s barely coherent and contains massive spending pledges with no indication of how they will be funded.”
Councillor Pattle, the sole Lib Dem on the council, added: “Existing reform work has been well-documented, whether it’s Clackmannanshire and Falkirk Council spooling legal resources, the benefits of being a part of a City Region Deal, or the shared benefits of public, private and third sector working with Regional Transport Partnerships to name a few.
“Instead of building on this good work, actually funding local government properly to deliver the services it is best placed to do, the Scottish Government wants to rip it all up and start again. And they want to do this in three months – presumably with an eye on the crucial local elections in 2027.”
The councillor said that in the last 20 years local government funding has been stripped meaning deep cuts to services – losing organisational skills, expertise and goodwill along the way.
Plans remain sketchy but the Scottish Government has said things will become clearer by the end of the year, after this initial consultation.
Alasdair Black, the council’s finance director, has told councillors he expects more clarity after the Scottish budget is published in December.
This month’s meeting of the council’s Executive passed a motion from the ruling Labour group.
Council leader Lawrence Fitzpatrick’s motion said: “The council was large enough to deliver strategic services such as Education, Housing, and Social Care, with strong performance and high quality, yet small enough to remain close to its citizens, take account of local need in all aspects of service delivery, and maintain excellent customer service.”
It called on the council to instruct the chief executive to write to the First Minister, President of COSLA, and West Lothian’s constituency MSPs requesting that “they support the continuation of West Lothian Council as a local authority serving the people and communities of West Lothian”.
The three SNP councillors on the Executive abstained from the vote.
Afterwards, Councillor Janet Campbell, the group leader, said: “The reform process is about engagement, consultation and gathering evidence. Labour chose to turn that into a political campaign against proposals that have not yet been agreed. The SNP believes decisions of this scale should be based on facts, evidence and meaningful consultation, not political posturing. That is why we abstained.”