Fife Council Budget 2024: leaders speak on key challenges in Council Tax freeze

Two facts were undisputed: Fife Council will receive £861 million from the Scottish Government as part of its general pay package, and it will receive an additional £9.5 million from the government to compensate for the national council tax freeze.

How does that compare to Fife’s pay package from last year? It depends on who you ask. Fife’s SNP Opposition leader David Alexander insists there is no direct year on year comparison.

“You cannot do a clear comparison; there’s too many moving targets,” he said. “We received an email from [the Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Services] this morning saying there's no direct comparison because of all the moving targets.

However, Lib-Dem group leader Jonny Tepp says the £861 million general revenue package is equivalent to a £3 million cash cut compared to last year.That conclusion ignores the money Fife will receive for the Council Tax freeze, according to Cllr Alexander – “If you add in the amount we’re getting for the tax freeze, that adds another £9.5 million which my colleagues forgot to mention,” he argued.

Cllr Tepp disputed that the funding for the freeze is indeed “more than we assumed” but he argued that “it’s a question of giving with one hand and taking away with the other.”

“We’re getting more on the council tax but less on a like for like basis on the overall grant,” he said.

According to Council Leader David Ross (Labour), the £9.5 million Fife is receiving is equal to a 5% Council Tax increase. However, he argued that it is losing the equivalent of a 2% increase on the core grant. “Effectively we’re getting a 3% Council Tax raise which is what we were estimating, but Council Tax is still outwith our control,” said Cllr Ross. “I’d certainly have been proposing to go out and consult on another 1% increase to see if people would put up with that we could invest in our roads this year.”

The conversation quickly turned from numbers to the overall merits of a freeze. Cllr Alexander staunchly defended the Scottish Government’s decision. Others were critical. In October, First Minister Humza Yousaf announced that Council Tax would be frozen at current levels into 2025. Cllr Ross, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), and others have been very critical of that centralised decision ever since.

Fife’s Conservative party leader Kathleen Leslie said it was “an overreach of national government.”

She said: “Fife Council was originally looking at a 3% rise. What annoys me is that this decision was made at a national level without consultation and was against the spirit of the Verity House Agreement. These decisions should rest with local governments.”

Cllr Tepp questioned the impact of the freeze on local democracy and called it a “regressive tax” adding: “Freezing it benefits the best off.”

However, Cllr Alexander defended the SNP position. He argued that increasing Council Tax, such as Fife Council did last year, adds “to the debt of an awful lot of people who can’t afford to pay it. We have right now got to protect the people out there from any excess increases,” he said. “If we can freeze Council Tax this year, we should grasp that. We cherish it.”

Concluding the debate, Cllr Ross argued that his Labour administration has preferred to put money into targetted support and hardship funds rather than "simply holding down the Council Tax."