Orkney Islands Council is leading the way to a better life, putting up its council tax by 15 per cent.
Most of the other 31 local councils have settled for rises of 8-10 percent, though Falkirk Council has followed Orkney’s lead and agreed a 15.6 per cent rise. For nearly 20 years the SNP government has imposed a council tax freeze which has left councils using up their reserves to keep their schools, care services and waste collections going.
Now the independent councillors of Orkney and Falkirk have decided “enough is enough”. Austerity, from Edinburgh and London, must end. So the average household in Orkney will be paying £1,500 a year in council tax. It’s no surprise that Orkney Council is composed of councillors from no political party, except for two Greens. In Falkirk too it was the independent councillors, with Labour support, who overturned the SNP administration and voted for a 15.6 per cent increase, taking the average council tax bill to £1,570.
Orkney has always been an independent sort of place. It had to be at the dawn of civilisation, in the Bronze and Iron Ages, when the Ring of Brodgar and the other Neolithic structures were built. It was a Pictish Kingdom and then, for 600 years, a colony of Norway. It’s been part of Scotland since 1472, but a very distinctive part.
A quarter of its 22,000 population still has Norwegian genes, another quarter are incomers, so called “white settlers” from England. It has its own Orcadian dialect and in recent times has produced some fine literary figures, Edwin Muir, Eric Linklater and George Mackay Brown. Farming and fishing are still important parts of the economy but Orkney has added other industries to the mix, such as whisky distilling, tourism, arts and crafts and wind and tidal power.
Like many island communities, Orcadians sometimes feel neglected by the Central Belt potentates in Edinburgh. They complain about ferry services, postal and internet services, support for their smaller schools and GP surgeries.
Indeed, small towns feel the same neglect, like Falkirk, which was once the cradle of Scotland’s industrial revolution, with its coal and iron works. It’s no coincidence that they are the ones resorting to self-help and putting up their council taxes more than the big cities.
So while Edinburgh and Glasgow and Dundee have fixed their council tax rates at about 8 per cent, many outlying councils have raised their rates by 10 per cent (eg the Borders, East Lothian, Aberdeenshire, Shetland) and some have gone further – West Dunbartonshire 11.5 per cent, Clackmannanshire 13 per cent and Falkirk’s 15.6 per cent.
The Westminster government has spotted this regional disenchantment with the Scottish government. This week it announced a cunning “Plan for Neighbourhoods” which will see £20 million spent on improving local infrastructure in each of ten towns across Scotland: Kirkwall in Orkney, Elgin, Peterhead, Arbroath, Coatbridge, Clydebank, Greenock, Irvine, Kilmarnock and Dumfries.
It’s spread over ten years, so it’s not a total rebuild and it won’t make up for the years of the council tax freeze. In fact the Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that if Scottish councils are to keep up with spending at English councils, they should be putting up council tax by nearly 20 per cent.
This whole fraught argument over local services and local taxation is a spring-time ritual. Every year the government says it’s providing local councils with a bigger central grant (£5 billion this coming year). And every year the councils say it’s a real terms cut when rising costs are taken into account. And every year, everyone agrees the local taxation system needs to change, to be fairer and more locally determined. But no one has the courage to come up with a better system or to review the valuation of properties on which the tax is based, which, shamefully, has not been done in Scotland for 20 years.
It’s also come at a time when it’s fashionable to call for lower taxation and smaller government, especially when cuts in services don’t affect you directly.
In the end however, all civilisations need communal facilities, whether that’s streets and drains, or schools or hospitals, or, as they did in ancient Orkney, rings of stone to worship the sun god.
Neolithic cathedral-building must have involved a huge communal effort or tax-in-kind. Over 60 large stones were set around a circular ditch 100m in diameter. 27 of them were set so firmly in the earth they are still standing 4,000 years later. In Falkirk, the Romans left their mark – the remains of their Antonine Wall are still visible.
The Picts too left their mighty stones, still standing today, though alas, one of them was blown over this week in the Angus village of Aberlemno. The stone, 2.3m tall and beautifully carved with Pictish symbols, has stood by the roadside for 1,200 years. The damage is still being assessed and hopefully it can be put back in its place…though whether our modern skills can make it stand for another thousand years or 4,000 years I very much doubt.
Especially if we can’t agree on a tax system to make it happen.
