The SNP often likes to claim that the UK Government in Westminster does not treat the Scottish Government, and the Scottish Parliament, with the respect they deserve.

In reality, however, if you want to see an example of a disrespectful relationship between two tiers of government, you need look no further than the Scottish Government’s approach to local councils.

At the SNP conference last week, First Minister Humza Yousaf announced that council tax would be frozen for the next year in the upcoming Scottish budget.

While I welcome any efforts to tackle rising costs placed on households, this announcement was typical of the SNP’s relationship with local government.

In the days following this announcement, it was revealed that councils hadn’t even been consulted about this decision – despite the fact it carries major consequences for council budgets, which our local services depend on.

They have also received no assurances that this freeze will be fully funded.

Ironically, this announcement was made just a few short months after the SNP Scottish Government announced the Verity House Agreement - a document which promised a renewed relationship with local councils, with ‘improved engagement’ on budget issues.

Despite the fact that the ink is barely even dry on this agreement, the SNP already appear to be rowing back on it.

But this latest attitude towards local government is hardly surprising when you look at the SNP’s record in this area.

For the last decade, councils have had to watch their budgets be repeatedly cut in real-terms, all while the Scottish Government’s own budget increases.

Year after year, the Scottish Government gives local government more work to do, but hardly any more money to do it with.

We also know that the Scottish Government is repeatedly overruling local councils on issues such as planning decisions.

From 2017 to 2022, nearly 400 local authority planning decisions were overturned by the Scottish Government – which often meant that more than half the decisions that were sent for appeal each year were overturned.

Each one of these overturned decisions is representative of an SNP Government that has no respect for local democracy, and is prepared to repeatedly tell councils that it knows better than them.

But as an MSP who sits on the Scottish Parliament’s local government committee, I will be arguing for a better relationship between our councils and central government.

This means giving councils the funding they need to deliver the services that people expect.

It means councils having more freedom to choose how they raise their funding, and where it can be spent.

It also means respecting the autonomy of councils instead of repeatedly overriding them.

Our councils are the closest level of government to communities up and down the country. Instead of using them as a vessel to deliver central government policy, it is high time the SNP empowered local government to play its role as effectively as possible – just as it promised only a few months ago.