A storm is coming: is this the end of the partnership between central and local government?

When Nicola Sturgeon became First Minister, she was very keen to tell everyone she wanted to usher in a new era of consensus in the debating chamber at Holyrood. While this caused raised eyebrows among the opposition, the idea was generally welcomed.

Moving down a tier of government, consensus has marked the Scottish Government’s relationship with councils since 2007, when the SNP first came into power. The now famous (or should that be infamous?) Concordat was signed and included a number of measures, importantly, the removal of restrictive ringfencing, and promised “a new relationship between the Scottish Government and local government, based on mutual respect and partnership”.

Of course many jumped on this as proof councils, often painted as the bad guys in every situation, wanted to slash teacher numbers

Fast forward eight years and there have obviously been occasions where councils – through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) – have clashed with the Scottish Government but things have generally been rosy. Someone once described it to me as being the slightly uncomfortable equivalent of local and central government holding hands and skipping through a meadow.

However, in the past couple of weeks the hand holding has stopped; the two have resorted to pushing each other and a bit of kicking (this is as far as I’m taking the metaphor, you’ll be glad to hear). It all started when Finance Secretary John Swinney used his budget speech a couple of weeks ago to challenge councils over teacher numbers.

Additional funding was announced which included £10m for councils to maintain teacher numbers and a further £20m to tackle the attainment gap.

Swinney said while SNP councils had supported the move, COSLA as a whole had been unable to agree to it. He added that the Government had “no alternative” but to make funding available on a council by council basis if local authorities are prepared to sign up to a clear commitment to protect teacher numbers. 

Failure to deliver “will result in a further clawback of funding,” he added. Aka: “the gloves are off”.

COSLA was understandably furious, saying they had never walked away from negotiations as Swinney claimed and adding that councils “have consistently argued that focusing on teacher numbers won’t deliver the improvements in attainment that we all desire”.

Of course many jumped on this as proof councils, often painted as the bad guys in every situation, wanted to slash teacher numbers, but the reality is more complex.

The SNP has made much of wanting to devolve power from Edinburgh back into council chambers across the land – the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill is one of their flagship pieces of legislation.

However, a move like this on teacher numbers, just like the ongoing council tax freeze, does not chime well with this agenda. The SNP Government has been keen to support more powers for councils but apparently only on their own terms. 

Some of the more hysterical headlines following Swinney’s announcement said the Concordat was dead but I don’t think this is the case – yet. Local and central government have never been entirely comfortable bedfellows but how both of them move on from this will be the true test of the partnership. Only time will tell whether this causes a real schism or if they’re back skipping through that meadow in the near future.