‘LAST month, we heard that a ninth local authority looks set to leave COSLA. Bitter politics aside, the debate about how well local government in Scotland serves the public is fascinating. It is also hugely important.

COSLA has, for a very long time, enjoyed a monopoly of control over local authority engagement and negotiation with the majority SNP Scottish Government. Breaking that monopoly will therefore have huge implications for Scottish voters, as was admitted by the First Minister.

In the first instance, voters want to know what the implications will be for the allocation of money to local authority budgets and the impact on council spending plans. And it is clear from what Finance Secretary, John Swinney, has said to council leaders that there would be some differences in the revenue and capital allocations process depending on whether or not local authorities are part of COSLA.

Last year, COSLA leaders voted to ask the Scottish Government to fund local authorities on the so-called “flat-cash” basis which means using one year’s percentage allocation as the basis for calculating the next year’s contribution. However, many of their COSLA members didn’t really like this formula as it meant some of the smaller councils losing out to the bigger councils like Glasgow and Edinburgh. This partly explains why all of the political parties are finding it so difficult to agree a line on the issue since the determining factor is the size of the local authority rather than its effectiveness or its financial stability. This is not how it should be and it has just added fuel to the already well lit political fires within council chambers.

As has been pointed out by COSLA members, these times are particularly challenging. They point especially to the substantial squeeze on budgets and to the fact that whilst a council tax freeze has been warmly welcomed by voters, it has also brought financial constraints to local government. But they are also talking about a more deep-seated problem. The “Historic Concordat” which was agreed between the Scottish Government and local authorities in 2007 was initially very popular because it brought with it a fair degree of self-discipline. Local authorities felt they were included in policy-making and there was a genuine desire to extend localism and local democracy.

If the nine local authorities who have indicated they want to quit COSLA go ahead and do so, well over a quarter of voters will then live in a local authority which is no longer represented by COSLA. Accordingly, they would not therefore be able to have access to COSLA’s legitimacy when it comes to negotiating with the Scottish Government on funding. That should send out serious warning signals to John Swinney. The SNP Scottish Government simply cannot afford to take a head in the sand approach. Ministers need to prepare for the eventuality that COSLA will be diminished and, over time, perhaps disappear, changing the whole basis of the relationship between central and local government.

With almost a third of councils now saying they will leave COSLA, it is time for a serious look at local government – not just in terms of the efficient delivery of local services and the number of local authorities there should be, but in terms of the nature of their relationship with central government and whether there should be a realignment of the services delivered by local government in the first place.

Everyone knows the next six months represent an historic watershed in terms of Scotland’s political history. When the voters are asking the Yes and No camps to lay out their stalls on independence and the future of devolution, they should also be asking about the different parties’ manifestoes for local government since this will have just as much impact on communities and local services people across Scotland rely on’.