Glasgow council tax to rise as SNP and Greens agree budget

Council tax in Glasgow is set to rise by between 5% and 6%, after the SNP and Greens agreed a deal to pass a budget.

Free school meals are expected to be expanded to all children in primary seven, and the council also plans to invest in cleansing, including more gully cleaning to prevent flooding.

The city’s treasurer, Cllr Ricky Bell, SNP, confirmed on Monday that he has reached an agreement with the Green group ahead of Tuesday’s meeting to set a budget for 2026/27.

He intends to borrow money – after the Scottish Government allowed the council to use its capital grant to pay the cost of borrowing – to help cover a £36.8m spending gap.

Glasgow is facing a huge homelessness bill, estimated to be around £56m in the coming financial year, and held talks with the government over a solution.

Cllr Bell, the depute leader of the council, said the city’s homeless crisis is “not of Glasgow’s making”. Borrowing is a “one-year solution to get us through this tricky position”, he added.

On the council tax rise, he added: “We are very, very conscious that everybody is in a cost of living crisis. Even people that are working full time, some folk are doing two or three jobs and still finding it difficult to make ends meet.”

He said he wanted to keep any rise below a 6% “ceiling”.

Extra money will also be put into health and social care services, managed by the integration joint board (IJB), which faces a difficult budget next month.

Glasgow declared a housing emergency in late 2023 due to rising pressure on homelessness services, which the council said had been exacerbated by Home Office plans to speed up the processing of asylum claims.

Costs have soared due to high demand for accommodation, with around £4.5m per month spent on unsuitable B&Bs or hotels. Around half of the demand for homelessness assistance is from refugees.

Cllr Bell said the council has lobbied the UK Government for support but received very little response. “We’ve had to go to the Scottish Government and say ‘if you don’t help us out of this situation, we are going to end up in a really terrible place, with a budget that has got significant cuts in it’,” he added.

He explained the Scottish Government has agreed to “allow us to convert capital into revenue” to cover the homelessness bill and “then borrow new capital to backfill the capital, because you’re not allowed to borrow revenue to pay debt”.

The council will work with the government on “how we can change the rules around the homelessness situation” to reach a “sustainable position”, Cllr Bell added. Currently, the costs are forecast to hit £74m in 27/28 and £91m in 28/29.

He said people are attracted to Glasgow because of the communities already formed in the city. “If you’re a Bangladeshi or a Pakistani person or whatever, same with the Chinese community, there are quite big communities of those people here in Glasgow already, so you can see the obvious attraction.”

The city treasurer suggested the council should be given “flexibility” to house people who declare themselves homeless in Glasgow, elsewhere in Scotland. He added the council won’t be letting the UK Government “off the hook” and will be pushing for support after this year’s budget.

An agreement has been reached on a joint SNP and Green budget as their priorities are “never a million miles apart”, the council’s depute leader said.

“Last year, we expanded free school meals for all children in Glasgow in primary six. We made a commitment that we will expand that to primary seven, I don’t intend to break that commitment,” he added.

“We will be the first council in Scotland, I think in the UK, who are providing free school meals to every child in primary school, and primary six and seven are funded by us, not by the government.”

The budget will put “more money into cleansing, into gullies” and into improving the city centre, Cllr Bell said. Funding for the council’s holiday food programme has also been protected.

Glasgow Labour has said it will present a budget that ensures council tax does not rise above inflation (3%) and called on the SNP and Greens to do the same.

Cllr Catherine Vallis, Labour’s finance lead, said: “This is a budget built around fairness for Glaswegians.

“With the little the council has been given from the Scottish Government, we have prioritised bringing investment and opportunity to Glasgow, cleaning up our streets and making the council offices open to the public again.”

Your Party councillors have announced they will table a budget which refuses to cut services and includes “transformative measures” to take steps to end homelessness in the city and move workers to a four-day working week with no loss of pay.