LG Overview March 2016 podcast transcript 
I’m here with Douglas Sinclair, chair of the Accounts Commission, to talk about the Local Government Overview.  Douglas, can you tell me what this report is about…
Yes, it’s the Commission’s annual review of how Scotland’s councils have been doing over the last year and how they’re approaching the increasingly tough challenges they face. 
What have you found?
Councils have been effective in balancing their budgets to date, but face a range of increasing demands and new challenges which shouldn’t be underestimated. For example, they include joint health and social care integration which is the biggest public service reform since the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
And on top of this, councils face a reduction of 5% in revenue funding in the next financial year – from next month in fact.
How are they going to cope?
Well, so far many of them have been making incremental savings to existing services, such as reducing staff numbers or increasing charges. But because of the scale of the challenge now facing Councils, in a nutshell, cuts in staff and services alone will not cut it. What is needed is longer-term planning and a greater openness to considering alternative forms of service delivery.
So what does this mean for the public?
Well as you know, councils provide key services which affect our daily lives. And despite making savings to meet their budgets, indicators do show that councils have improved performance in areas like educational attainment, housing quality and waste recycling in 2014 and 15. At the same time customer satisfaction with some services has declined. But what’s really important for the public is that whatever choice a Council makes about how to provide a service, it can demonstrate that the choice represents best value both in terms of cost and quality. 
Will the end of the council tax freeze and the other changes announced by the Scottish Government solve the problems you outline in this report?
No, because the facts we outline remain the same. The freezing of the council tax and other changes won’t take effect until the following financial year (that’s 2017/18) at the earliest. And the details of implementation have still to be worked out. So it really is too early to say what impact they will have on future finances of individual councils. 
And what do you want to see happen next?
Well this report aims to help councillors to do their job, which is becoming more complex and demanding each year. So they do need to keep updating their skills and knowledge to be able to challenge and scrutinise decisions and performance.  And we’ve included in the report some questions for councillors to ask to help them with their scrutiny role and we hope that they’ll find these helpful.
Douglas, thank you very much