r/Glasgow Tools

Title
Author	zellisgoatbond
Comment	Imagine you're a kid, and you're getting a fiver a week in pocket money. Then, your mum says you'll now be getting £7 a week, but you have to buy a loaf and a bottle of milk once a week. You're probably not getting any more of your "own" money (indeed you're probably getting less than a fiver now), but you still have to take the time to actually go and get the loaf and the milk. That is what the Scottish Government is doing to councils - they're saying that they're giving councils a lot more money, but they're also ringfencing a lot of that money and making them spend it on a lot of extra things they wouldn't normally do. Another issue is that council tax is a relatively small proportion of what councils actually earn (I think it's something like 15% of their budget, but I might be mistaken on that). The mechanisms of council tax are deeply regressive (i.e. poorer households pay a bigger proportion of their income on council tax than richer ones), and councils effectively have no control on those mechanisms - if they want to raise or lower council tax, the Scottish government sets the multiplier for how that impacts different bands, so any increase must apply to all households and vice versa. Hence, things like brown bin permits are quite important for councils, in part because it tends to be richer households that are more likely to have gardens and need garden waste removal. Basically, councils now have to do a lot more, the money they're getting isn't meaningfully increasing, and they have very few avenues for getting any more money that don't fuck over even more people.
Reddit Link	https://www.reddit.com/r/glasgow/comments/16q3k5p/garden_wastebrown_bin_permit_starting_1st_october/k1v2bxi/
Created	Sat 23rd Sep 2023 4:15pm
Status	normal ()

Imagine you're a kid, and you're getting a fiver a week in pocket money. Then, your mum says you'll now be getting £7 a week, but you have to buy a loaf and a bottle of milk once a week. You're probably not getting any more of your "own" money (indeed you're probably getting less than a fiver now), but you still have to take the time to actually go and get the loaf and the milk.

That is what the Scottish Government is doing to councils - they're saying that they're giving councils a lot more money, but they're also ringfencing a lot of that money and making them spend it on a lot of extra things they wouldn't normally do.

Another issue is that council tax is a relatively small proportion of what councils actually earn (I think it's something like 15% of their budget, but I might be mistaken on that). The mechanisms of council tax are deeply regressive (i.e. poorer households pay a bigger proportion of their income on council tax than richer ones), and councils effectively have no control on those mechanisms - if they want to raise or lower council tax, the Scottish government sets the multiplier for how that impacts different bands, so any increase must apply to **all** households and vice versa. Hence, things like brown bin permits are quite important for councils, in part because it tends to be richer households that are more likely to have gardens and need garden waste removal.

Basically, councils now have to do a lot more, the money they're getting isn't meaningfully increasing, and they have very few avenues for getting any more money that don't fuck over even more people.