The Scottish Budget includes 2025-26 Autumn Budget Revision (ABR) to 2026-27 Budget comparisons across portfolios, including Finance and Local Government, at the request of the Finance and Public Audit Committee.

While such comparisons can provide useful context for most portfolio areas, comparing ABR to Budget for Local Government can be misleading due to the number of portfolio transfers administered at ABR or Spring Budget Revision (SBR). For example, since Budget 2026-27 was published, Parliament’s agreement to SBR will see a further £280 million of transfers into the Local Government Settlement and at least £908 million of transfers are anticipated to be processed at ABR or SBR in 2026-27.

Table 4.15 of the Scottish Budget 2026-27, ‘Revenue Funding within Other Portfolios to be Transferred In-Year’, including details of the £908 million referenced above, provides a direct like with like comparison of the Local Government Settlement in each of 2024-25, 2025-26 and 2026-27.

That table, which is unique to the Local Government Settlement, mitigates the risks acknowledged by the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre that “that comparing portfolio allocations from the Budget to allocations from the 2025-26 ABR might be misleading” by providing a consistent comparison over time.

Table 4.15 has been included in the Budget document since 2017-18 to provide a transparent and comprehensive summary of the funding allocated in the total Local Government Settlement and then subsequently published in the relevant Local Government Finance Circular. For completeness, a full breakdown of funding that has been baselined into General Revenue or Capital Grant is also provided in Table 4.16 and this funding is restated in previous years to again ensure a like for like comparison.

An estimate of funding provided to Local Government outwith the Local Government Finance Settlement is also included in Table 4.17 of the Budget as a supporting document.

In 2025-26, the Local Government Settlement was £15,035.2 million. This was set out in Table 4.12 in the 2025-26 Budget and is repeated in Table 4.15 in the 2026-27 Budget. In 2026-27, the equivalent figure is £15,686.1 million and is published in Table 4.15 of the 2026-27 Budget. The figures in both years include all the funding planned to be transferred from other portfolios, as anticipated at the time of the budget, and the detail of those transfers is set out at the bottom of Table 4.15 in the 2026-27 Budget.

Those figures represent a cash increase of £650.9 million or 4.3 per cent. In real terms, that is equivalent to an increase of £293.7 or 2 per cent. Although the real terms figures for the Local Government Settlement are not set out in the Budget document itself, they can easily be derived from the cash figures set out in Table 4.15 and replicated using an independent real terms calculator such as that published by the Scottish Parliament’s Information Centre.

As requested by COSLA Leaders, the Scottish Budget provides local authorities with full discretion over decisions on council tax, with no freeze and no cap. With over a quarter of a billion of additional General Revenue Grant in the Settlement, the Budget should enable councils to minimise any proposed increases in council tax.

Where increases in Council Tax are necessary, the Scottish Government’s means tested Council Tax Reduction Scheme continues to protect household budgets from the impact of those changes.