The environmental spending needs of Scotland's local authorities

Abstract

Scottish citizens benefit from 19 per cent more public spending per head than English citizens. The ‘Barnett formula’ is slowly reducing the gap, but very little is known about the countries' relative needs and hence about how far the present gap is defensible: the aim of this paper is to throw some light on the countries' relative needs. We begin with the complex formulae that the Westminster government uses to assess the spending needs of English local authorities, and we use these English formulae to assess the needs of Scottish local authorities for three major blocks of local services. These formulae suggest that Scotland needs 6.4 per cent more per head than England for environmental, protective and cultural services, 8.1 per cent more for highway maintenance, and between 24.3 per cent and 35.3 per cent more for fire services. We also combine these results with those of two other papers concerned with local education and social services to show that these English formulae put Scotland's per capita needs for local government services as a whole at about 6 per cent above England's. However, we then compare the relative needs of Scottish local authorities as assessed by the English formulae with their relative needs as assessed by the Scottish needs formulae that are currently used by Holyrood, and we find major differences. This suggests either that at least one country uses seriously flawed formulae to assess needs, or that the two countries have different conceptions of need.