Local government in Scotland is organised through 32 unitary authorities designated as Councils which consist of councillors elected every four years by registered voters in each of the council areas.
Councils receive the majority of their funding from the Scottish Government, through Aggregate External Finance (AEF). AEF consists of three parts: Revenue Support Grants, Non-Domestic Rates, and Income and Specific Grants. The level of central government support for each authority is determined by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, currently John Swinney MSP, and is distributed by the Finance and Central Services Department of the Scottish Government. Councils obtain additional income through the Council Tax, that the council itself sets.
Scottish councils co-operate through, and are represented collectively by, the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA).
Read more about Local Government In Scotland: Map, Governance and Administration, Election Results, 2007, Election Results, 2003, Community Councils
Famous quotes containing the words local, government and/or scotland:
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but as I love literature and to some extent the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God’s Lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called gods.”
—James I of England, James VI of Scotland (1566–1625)