Local government in Scotland is critical to reducing poverty

Local government’s central role

Nearly 1 million people in Scotland are trapped in poverty, including around 1 in 5 children. Reducing poverty on this scale is a shared effort, and councils hold some of the most important levers to do it.

But they cannot do that alone, as the Scottish Government has significant control over local government funding and national policy levers, like Scottish social security. The UK Government’s decisions on overall public spending, economic development and the broader social security system also play a crucial role.

We see this reflected by the public. There is clear recognition that reducing poverty is a shared responsibility between different tiers of government:

nearly 2 in 3 (63%) said that the Scottish Government were highly responsible
over half (54%) said that the UK Government were highly responsible
around half (49%) of people think that their local council is highly responsible
2 in 5 said all 3 were highly responsible.

The belief that councils hold responsibility for reducing poverty in their area is held consistently for people across household incomes, in urban and rural areas, and in the most and least deprived communities. Each level of government must take action to reduce poverty, with each having a key part to play. However, for people in poverty this shared responsibility can often feel like responsibility is passed between levels of government.

All three [UK, Scottish and local governments] are responsible but it’s just a blame game between the three of them.
Zain, End Poverty Scotland Group (EPSG)

The general public also do not feel that councils are doing enough to reduce poverty in their local communities. Only 1 in 10 (13%) people agreed that their council is doing everything they can to reduce child poverty in their area.

2 in 3

people think their council receives too little funding

6 in 10

people disagree that their council listens to the concerns of people like them

Local funding is inadequate

While good work is happening in councils across Scotland, poverty prevention and other services for people living on a low income are hampered by the funding they receive from Scottish Government. Councils are increasingly struggling to balance their budgets and have, in the past, reported plans to cut services that would increase risks to vulnerable people.

This is a choice made by the Scottish Government. Single-year settlements and ring-fenced funding leave councils little room to plan or deliver the long-term, preventative work that reducing poverty demands.

We spoke to members of the End Poverty Scotland Group (EPSG), a small lived experience group who have been working closely with our Scotland team on the Poverty in Scotland report. We also spoke to participants from our Grounded Voices programme, run by JRF’s Insight Infrastructure team. Over 5 months, the programme works with a group of participants to collect real-time qualitative data about their lives and how they are affected by living on a low income. Both Grounded Voices participants and EPSG members told us that local council staff are clearly stretched, being expected to do more with less. Kirsty, who had previously worked in local social care services, told us:

"From when I started working with the council about 11 years ago, the cutbacks are just every year, obviously to do with finances... on my side of it, doing care, they want more from us, with less time, less staff, it's just very demanding and I feel we can’t give 100% like we used to do."
Kirsty, Grounded Voices

Yet, while people can recognise these strains on local budgets, this doesn’t mean they no longer need access to this support and services.

When people were asked to think about the services that their communities need, they think that the level of funding required to provide these services is not met. Two thirds (67%) of people said they thought that their council receives too little funding, and most of them felt it was significantly too little. We see variation across neighbourhood deprivation, household income and urban and rural areas, but consistently, the majority report that their council receives too little funding.

We also found high levels of support for more progressive local funding distributions. There is no clear frontrunner in what should be considered, but it’s clear that people think there should be focus on poverty and deprivation, with these coming out top. 2 in 3 people said that area deprivation, poverty and/or child poverty in the local area should be considered when council funding is being allocated.

Local services are weakest where they are needed most

We see generally high levels of satisfaction with the services people are using, and there are high levels of trust in delivery staff. It’s reassuring that when services are accessed, people often have positive experiences, in part due to delivery staff.

Universal services that are provided broadly and accessed more frequently are rated most highly across groups, for example, 72% of people that had used a school were satisfied. We also looked at satisfaction across the range of services that people used. The majority of people were satisfied with some or most of the services that they used, and while satisfaction is lower for people in more deprived areas or in lower-income households, the majority remain satisfied with some or most of the services that they use.

However, for the local services that are most critical to low-income families, and to poverty prevention, there are lower levels of satisfaction. We found that:

46% of people who had used a money or debt advice service were satisfied
39% of people who had used council housing services were satisfied
around one third of people (36%) who had used employment or job support services were satisfied.

We can’t look at satisfaction in these services by income or deprivation due to sample sizes, but we do know that these services are more likely to be accessed by low-income households and in deprived areas. At the same time as the public report lower satisfaction with these services, members of EPSG told us that poverty prevention needed to be prioritised by local councils:

As we’ve said many times before, prevention is better.
Zain, EPSG

We did hear of some good work that is happening to support low-income households in deprived areas of Scotland. Laura, from EPSG, told us about excellent work happening in the community around her school that has helped her and other families in poverty in her area:

"The services at the school… they were really good with food parcels, food vouchers, special summer holidays stuff like setting up days out for your kids, summer camps and that kind of thing. And then we’ve got the financial inclusion support officer, she is brilliant."
Laura, EPSG

They emphasised the importance of council staff having knowledge of both the systems and the communities they serve and communicating clearly and with compassion.

Political disaffection in local politics

Earlier this year we reported on feelings of disaffection with Scottish politics. While people are relatively satisfied with the local services that they use, we see high levels of disaffection with local government. People don’t feel listened to, don’t feel like their council knows their community and don’t see how voting in their council elections makes a difference to their life.

As with Scottish Government, people are feeling let down by politics — only with action to target things that are important to local people, like poverty, will faith be restored.

Conclusion

The Scottish Government must build a more functional relationship with local authorities on poverty reduction. Their plans for public service reform must include fundamentally reforming local government finance in Scotland. Councils’ anti-poverty efforts are critical to reducing poverty in Scotland but are hampered by inadequate funding.

Our report suggests that while public service reform is needed, councils also need to be much more accountable to local people. The need to be better able to understand their communities’ needs, and better equipped to respond to them. A huge part of that is how councils are funded — reform of councils’ governance without local government finance reform is not just a missed opportunity, it is missing the point.

However, these reforms will not happen overnight and there is plenty that local government can and should do now in their anti-poverty mission. Our work with the End Poverty Scotland Group highlighted 3 key priorities for local authorities:

Prevention: focus on preventing poverty in their communities by making full use of levers including economic development, childcare, employability, transport, housing and schools.
Local services: provide better-quality and more joined-up local services to support families in or at risk of poverty.
Communication: significantly improve day-to-day communication with the public. This should be underpinned by deeper and more meaningful work to involve people with lived experience of poverty in local decision-making.