East Lothian Council leader Willie Innes went against the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) to sign an individual deal with the Scottish Government to ensure the county received its full share of grants for the coming year.

Mr Innes told a meeting of the council this week he had taken the decision “in the best interest of East Lothian”.

However, he criticised the Scottish Government for failing to negotiate a collective agreement with local authority umbrella body COSLA for all the councils and forcing him to take the deal.

He said: “The consequences of not agreeing to the offer from the Scottish Government was a claw back of almost £800,000, which would have had a serious impact as we had set our budget just two weeks earlier with that money in it.” COSLA has been in dispute with the Scottish Government over its insistence local authorities have to maintain teacher numbers to receive their full grant each year.

It argued that councils, who already have to agree to freeze council tax rates for the money, should be able to make their own decisions over their schools.

The Scottish Government stopped negotiations with COSLA over the issue and approached local authorities asking them to agree individual agreements on the issue.

Mr Innes said last Friday he sent a letter to the Cabinet Secretary confirming East Lothian Council would agree.

He said: “On Friday I wrote advising we would be accepting the offer, but expressed my concern that there is no collective agreement with COSLA. I believe I acted in the best interests of the council.” Last year, Mr Innes came under fire for siding with COSLA leaders to vote through a deal with the Scottish Government which potentially lost East Lothian Council a six-figure sum.

He voted for a flat rate of dividing up the money, instead of a needs-based method which would have been more favourable for the county, and was accused of putting Labour Party politics ahead of his local duties.

This time, he said he made a decision which was best for the council and had to be made before the end of February.

Councillor Stuart Currie, leader of the SNP opposition, said this time COSLA had picked the wrong issue to fight about.

He said: “It is right for teacher numbers to be maintained. There are many things for COSLA to pick a fight about, [but] this is not the right one.”