Current status: Answered by Gillian Martin on 3 June 2025
To ask the Scottish Government whether any extra resources will be made available to local authorities to hire additional waste management and operative staff, ahead of the design of a statutory Household Recycling Charter.
The 2025-26 budget provides local government in Scotland with record funding of over £15.1 billion, a real terms increase of 5.5% and the Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently.
As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them. This includes for waste services on the balance of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.
The Scottish Government is working in partnership with local government representatives to design the methodology for the co-design of the Code of Practice. This collaborative work will help to ensure that the project draws on best available evidence whilst also being deliverable and affordable.
This partnership working will also ensure that any new commitments or changes to existing policy that have a financial cost for local government, will be considered and approved through the formal financial governance process. This requires agreed recommendations from the joint Scottish Government and COSLA Officers’ Settlement and Distribution Group (SDG) and political agreement from Scottish Ministers and COSLA political Leaders.