Local Authority Provisional Outturn (2017-18) and Budget Estimates (2018-19)

Scotland’s Chief Statistician today published local authority Provisional Outturn (2017-18) and Budget Estimate (2018-19) Statistics. The publication provides net revenue expenditure figures for all the main services carried out by Scotland’s local authorities.

2017-18 – Provisional Outturn

Scotland’s local authorities’ provisional outturn total net revenue expenditure is £12.008 billion. This is an increase of £0.133 billion (+1.1%) compared with 2016-17.

£5.037 billion of this expenditure is on Education, an increase of £0.158 billion (+3.2%) on 2016-17.  £3.216 billion is on Social Work, an increase of £0.077 billion (+2.4%). These two services account for over two thirds of expenditure, with Education accounting for 41.9% of net expenditure and social work accounting for 26.8%.

Net revenue expenditure is funded from Scottish Government grants, local taxes and reserves.  Local Authorities received £6.947 billion (58% of expenditure) from Scottish Government Grants, received £2.669 billion (22%) from non-domestic rates and raised £2.265 billion (19%) from council tax. This funding totalled £11.882 billion, leaving £0.126 billion (1%) of expenditure to be funded from local authority reserves.

At the 1^st April 2017, local authorities held General Fund reserves of £1.159 billion. Local authorities used £0.126 billion of reserves to fund expenditure in 2017-18 and transferred £0.033 billion from other reserves, leaving a General Fund balance of £1.067 billion at the 31^st March 2018. Of the 32 authorities, 24 authorities drew on reserves to fund expenditure in 17-18 and 8 contributed to their reserves.

2018-19 – Budget Estimates

For 2018-19 Scotland’s local authorities have set a net revenue expenditure budget of £12.137 billion for spending on all services. This is £0.235 billion more (+2.0%) than the budget set for 2017-18.

£5.159 billion of the budget is for Education, an increase of £0.189 billion (+3.8%) on 2017-18.  £3.260 billion is on Social Work, an increase of £0.086 billion (2.7%). These two services account for over two thirds of the budget, with Education accounting for 42.5% of the total budget and social work accounting for 26.9%.

Local Authorities have budgeted to receive £7.070 billion (58% of expenditure) from Scottish Government grants, receive £2.636 billion (22%) from non-domestic rates and raise £2.319 billion (19% of total funding) from council tax. This funding totals £12.024 billion, with £0.113 billion (1%) being funded from local authority reserves

At the 1^st April 2018, local authorities estimate that they hold General Fund reserves of £1.067 billion. Local authorities have budgeted to use £0.113 billion of reserves to fund expenditure in 2018-19 and plan to transfer £0.033 billion from other reserves, which would leave a General Fund balance of £0.986 billion at the 31^st March 2019. Of the 32 authorities, 26 authorities plan to use reserves to fund expenditure in 2018-19, 2 plan to neither use or increase their reserves and 4 plan to increase their reserves.

Background

The Provisional Outturn and Budget Estimates (POBE) have been collected with the help of the 32 unitary local authorities. The continued co-operation of these bodies in completing these returns is gratefully acknowledged.

The provisional outturn 2017-18 expenditure are unaudited and subject to revision.  The final, audited outturn 2017-18 figures will be published in the Scottish Local Government Financial Statistics (SLGFS) 2017-18, scheduled for publication in February 2019.

All data in this publication are net revenue expenditure figures.  Statistics on capital expenditure are collected through the CPOBE data collection, which is available at:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/Publications/CPOBE

Gross revenue expenditure is the total expenditure on local authority services within a financial year and net revenue expenditure is the gross revenue expenditure less any specific income for individual services. Net revenue expenditure is therefore expenditure to be financed from General Revenue Funding (which comprises General Revenue Grant and Ring-Fenced Revenue Grants), Non-Domestic Rates income, Council Tax income and local authority reserves.

Integration of Health and Social Care will affect the social work figures. Integration Joint Boards (IJB) will pool funding from both local authorities and the health boards. The IJB uses that pooled funding to commission services from the local authority and the NHS. This income from the IJB is treated as service income by the local authority and, as such, is excluded from the net revenue expenditure measure in this publication. Therefore, the net revenue expenditure figure here represents the amount of expenditure on services commissioned by the local authority outwith integration plus the amount the local authority has contributed to the IJB for the Integration of Health and Social Care.

The full statistical publication is available at: http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2018/06/8964

Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff – more information on the standards of official statistics in Scotland can be accessed at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/About