£1 billion in the bank but council tax will soar

The Scotsman picked up on this story, as did The Herald. The cheeky councils have been rumbled and the body which represents all councils the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), accused Audit Scotland of looking for "cheap headlines" - nothing cheap about £1 billion in my book.

"The figure - enough to pay for 34,482 teachers at £29,000 a year or to give £437.81 back to each household that pays council tax - was identified by the Accounts Commission, the council spending watchdog."

But the annual overview of local authority audits reveals the [audit]commission’s "growing concerns" in a wide range of areas.

These include: weakness in financial planning; limited use of risk management to drive performance; insufficient evidence of control and accountability in some councils’ funding of external organisations; failure to address previous concern over setting up audit committees to scrutinise spending and monitor reserves; and insufficient development of management practices.

If this were private companies we were speaking about here, all of the Coonsillars would be up in arms - of course when it's them, not a peep.

The Scotsman covers it here:
£1 billion in the bank but council tax will soar
The Herald covers it here:
Councils stockpile record £1bn as taxes rise