Scottish local authority finance and housing managers must understand the impact of austerity measures on vulnerable and disadvantaged residents as 'social risk', research has found.

A study of five Scottish authorities commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation finds councils are well placed to lessen the adverse effects of cuts but need to establish more innovative ways of setting priorities.

According to the researchers from Glasgow Caledonia University, locally tailored tools for handling risk, Social Risk Impact Assessments (SRIAs), would help authorities make the shift from a service based to a needs based approach.

These SRIA frameworks should be extended to cover all disadvantaged groups, such as vulnerable residents on low incomes, who are not protected by equalities impact assessments (EIAs), the authors advised.

Officers told the authors that disproportionate cuts to discretionary services could lead to the complete loss of preventative services, resulting in higher long-term social and economic costs. 

However, the paper found while education and social care departments recognised the issue as one of ‘social risk', housing and finance departments were only now coming to terms with the implications of the issue – and had to learn a new ‘language' of human rights and equalities to do so.

The head of finance for one of the authorities lamented a ‘missed opportunity to sort things out in the past 15 to 20 years in relation to the separation of discretionary and statutory services'.

‘They [the local authority] have never quite understood if we cut here in one area, then that, in another areas goes out of control so youth services is a classic example of this.

‘What impact will that have on the police in six moth's time?  I don't think the long-term impacts of service reconfiguration have been considered sufficiently'.