Funding provided for the Council Tax Freeze: FOI release

Information requested

Copy of the data prepared by the Scottish Government to assess the adequacy of the offer being 4.3% in cash terms.

Response

We have interpreted your request to be the adequacy of the funding provided for the Council Tax Freeze specifically. To note it is the overall Local Government Settlement that has increased by 4.3% in cash terms whereas the funding made available to councils to freeze Council Tax was equivalent to a 5% increase.

Despite continued austerity from the UK Government and a real terms cut in the Scottish Budget, the Scottish Government has provided record funding of over £14 billion to local authorities and increased local government's share of the discretionary budget. This includes £147 million that was made available to support agreement with councils to freeze their Council Tax in 2024-25.

The data you have requested is publicly available on the Scottish Government website and is accessible by following the links below. In 2023-24we estimated that £2,881 million would be raised in Council Tax, after taking into account the effects of Council Tax Reduction. £144 million is therefore equivalent to the net revenues raised by a 5% increase nationally and that was the figure made available to councils in the Scottish Budget on 19 December 2023. Ministers latterly chose to allocate a further £3 million, taking the overall funding to £147 million, to ensure no councils lost out solely on the basis of whether the funding was distributed on a net (of Council Tax Reduction Scheme) basis or on the basis of a proportionate share of gross revenue.

Council tax datasets - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)
Council tax reduction - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.