Scotland Finance Series – webinar 3: How radical could we be? Fri, 6 Nov

This event is exclusively for LGIU member councils and associate members and free to attend.

This third and final session in LGIU’s Scottish Local Government Finance Series will consider how radical local government finance reform could be. Scotland has looked to devolution elsewhere in the UK for inspiration before, but how much of that agenda could be applied to relationships between the Scottish Government and local government? Business rates, discretionary income and capital flexibility all offer potential – but imperfect – levers for change.

The first sessions in the series explore what local government needs to do and what needs to be funded locally, while this session pushes further, asking not just what could change, but how far that change could go.

Key areas of discussion

• What Scotland can learn from the UK Government's devolved funding agenda.
• Whether control of business rates should be returned to local government.
• How far councils could go in generating more income from discretionary services.
• What more could be done to give local authorities greater flexibility around capital spending.

Speakers

The speaker list for this webinar will be announced shortly.

Make sure to book onto the other two webinars: 

Webinar 1: Council Tax: reform or replace?

Webinar 2: Back to basics: what is local government for, and what needs to be funded locally?