In the latest Local Government overview, The Accounts Commission as part of Audit Scotland said that Scottish councils face an ‘increasingly challenging financial outlook’ and will face difficult decisions about the services they deliver due to the covid-19 pandemic.

The public spending watchdog said that the current timing and nature of funding for local government was going to create ‘pressure and uncertainty for councils beyond the current financial year’.

The overview calls for the Scottish government to provide a multi-year financial settlement so that the 32 local councils in Scotland can plan appropriately for the next few years in order to recover, but warns that the Scottish government will have to make ‘difficult fiscal decisions’ that will definitely ‘exacerbate the financial uncertainty challenge for councils’.

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