Thursday January 22nd 2026
This View has been written by Peter Smaill, Conservative Councillor for Midlothian East.
Midlothian Council is set to be clobbered again by the SNP Scottish Government. It has been forced to run down reserves again, despite the claim by Finance Minister Shona Robison that an increase of Scottish Government funding for 26/27 of 2.1% would be supportive of all Councils.
In Midlothian’s case, we will get only 0.8% and experience cuts in real terms, since pay inflation is running at around 3.5%. Midlothian has struggled to contain spend on school transport, teacher cover, and social work – there was an unplanned deficit of £2.6m in 2025/6. Now we have the added costs of building several schools to fund.
An unusual twist next financial year is that our social work allocation drops by £400,000. The SNP and their civil servants seem to think that (based on old data) areas in the rest of Scotland deserve more, despite our recent experience of record demand. Worst of all, there is a formula at play, called “The Floor”, which takes money off growing areas like the Lothians, and gives it to the depopulating places in the West and North.
Midlothian gave much of the rest of Scotland £1.87m to fund our share of the Floor in 2025/6. But the ratios are to be deliberately changed for the year to March 2027, such that a whopping £3.671m will be paid over. Since a 1% increase in Council Tax yields £670,000, we can compute that the redistribution between councils will cost us the equivalent of 5.5% of the 9% Council Tax uplift planned for next year. We need this money urgently right here.
What is our MSP Colin Beattie doing to sort out the systemic prejudice against Midlothian?
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