Talk:Local government in Scotland

Merge From

 * I propose and support a merge from Politics_of_Scotland as this article and that section are duplication of the same information. Davidkinnen 13:22, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

History
The history section starts very recently. A concise, informative presentation of the history of Scottish local government from its known, historical origins would be appropriate. It just starts "before 1975": not very useful, or accurate, as that county, counties of cities, and large/small burgh system had been in place for only 45 years.--Mais oui! 08:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Counties and county constituencies
I am wondering what happened to the boundaries of county constituencies when county councils were established. And is what happened in England and Wales the same as what happened in Scotland? I believe in Scotland the county system of subdivision did not fork as it did in England and Wales: boundaries were changed when county councils were introduced, but there was no parallel continuing existence of 'tradional counties' with different boundaries. I imagine, therefore, that in Scotland the creation of new county boundaries meant automatically the creation of new constituency boundaries. Laurel Bush 12:04, 6 February 2006 (UTC).

Seems I can now answer this one myself. By 1892 county boundaries were altered and uniform for all purposes except parliamentary representation, and there was then no change to constituency boundaries until 1918. Laurel Bush 10:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC).

PR
Should mention new election system. Catchpole 19:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Someone has added this 20:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Spartakan (talk • contribs)

Re-organise local-government related articles?
I cant help but thinking this should be merged with Subdivisions of Scotland or the relevent parts of the latter merged with this as it stands scottish local goverment is split across two articles -- Barryob   Vigeur de dessus  13:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Seems to me Subdivisions of Scotland should be about subdivisions generally. There various systems, including eg two systems of constituency subdivision. Re local government, by the way, there are also the articles Counties of Scotland, Regions and districts of Scotland and Islands council areas of Scotland. Laurel Bush 10:30, 23 April 2007 (UTC).


 * Tend to agree with Laurel Bush. But this article really does need some work. There is virtually zero coverage of the history of local government in the country - not a breath about pre-1890. What about the Middle Ages, and Early Modern period?


 * Mind you, the coverage of modern local government is almost non-existent too! --Mais oui! 10:36, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Re local government articles, there is also History of local government in Scotland, currently redirecting to History of local government in the United Kingdom. Laurel Bush 11:35, 23 April 2007 (UTC).

Might be a good idea, I am thinking, to have election results and control info in a series of separate articles, for 1995, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2011 etc, and then to merge History of local government in Scotland into this article, to create one article linking various related articles. Laurel Bush 12:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC).
 * Election results are also given in Elections in Scotland, and for Scottish council elections, 2007 (there is no earlier equivalent page, other than the isolated stub Scottish district council elections, 1977) - it would be good to give a consistent structure. Is there a good that can be used? --Spartakan (talk) 20:06, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Powers and responsibilities
The article is lacking in material on the powers and responsibilities of the council area councils. A section on this would help greatly. -- Jza84 · (talk) 21:55, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


 * The section Responsibilities does not include electoral services: running elections and maintaining the register. I presume this is an error . . . or is it because it's done by the Scottish government? Nick Barnett (talk) 08:39, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Convenor
My perception from a few examples is that the Convenor of the Executive Committee or Cabinet is effecively the leader of the Council, while the Provost chairs full council meetings. It may therefore be confusing to use "Convenor" as an alternative to "Provost"--Rumping (talk) 11:40, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Local government in Scotland. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120709053946/http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/elections/local/ to http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/elections/local/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120709053946/http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/elections/local/ to http://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/elections/local/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 02:30, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Local government in Scotland. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.gov.scot/library/documents3/ethic-07.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070929151425/http://www.cosla.gov.uk/political_control.asp?leftId=10001C391-10766746&rightId=10001C391-11002366&hybrid=false to http://www.cosla.gov.uk/political_control.asp?leftId=10001C391-10766746&rightId=10001C391-11002366&hybrid=false

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 22:49, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Convener (Provost)
It's not made clear whether the Convener (Provost) has to be a concillor, or if the council can elect any elector in the city/town to this position. I'd imagine that they much choose amongst themselves, but that's not made particularly clear. Also, do they retain a vote on council when elected to this position, or do they lose their vote? This all needs to be a bit more fleshed out, really. --Criticalthinker (talk) 19:50, 7 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Found my answer to this in the Local Government Act of 1994 and accordingly made the changes in the article. --Criticalthinker (talk) 04:19, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Non-Domestic Rates
"Non-domestic rates in Scotland were previously pooled and redistributed to councils according to a set formula without any passing through central government funds with nationally set exemptions, rebates and other measures. This system was abolished in 2020 and non-domestic rates are now entirely controlled by councils.[13]"

I believe that this is not accurate. An amendment was proposed to adopt this in the 2019 budget, but I believe it failed. The reference links to a Scottish Government page which explicitly states that rates are set nationally, and only administered by local councils. Is anybody able to confirm this? Gdjs123 (talk) 12:09, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

-- Now removed. No reference to support this. Gdjs123 (talk) 01:35, 29 May 2021 (UTC)