Corporate function data for public bodies excluding health boards, 2023-24 and 2024-25
Data on the size and costs of corporate functions in public bodies, excluding health boards. This provisional data release also includes information on the spend managed by corporate functions, and funding passed to different groups by public bodies.
Introduction
This provisional data release for public bodies excludes health boards. Data for Scottish Government and Health Boards will be collected and published later this year as a planned update to this provisional data release.
As part of the data commission, public bodies were asked to provide information across a broad set of areas. This included the costs of delivering corporate functions, spending managed by these functions and, at an organisational level, funds passed through to other organisations. Data was collected for the years 2023-24 and 2024-25.
The six corporate functions in scope were: Human Resources, Finance, Digital and Data, Commercial, Property, and Communications; the full definitions of team and activities for these categories are in the accompanying file. Public bodies with less than 40 full‑time equivalent (FTE) staff were given the option to submit aggregated data rather than apportioning costs across all six functions.
There are 108 public bodies which are not health boards. Of these, 90 were deemed in scope of the exercise, with exclusions including bodies and offices that are accountable to the Scottish Parliament and not to Scottish Ministers (such as Parliamentary Commissioners) and organisations with public body status where Ministers’ intention is to return these to private ownership (e.g. Ferguson Marine Port Glasgow).
Three public bodies deemed in scope have not provided data. Of these, SPS was omitted from this iteration following agreement by Scottish Government. The remaining two will be included in the planned update to this provisional data release.
The summary statistics presented here therefore reflect the responses of 87 public bodies. They should not be viewed as a complete picture of corporate spend across the public sector. Additional data on Health Boards and the Scottish Government will be collected and published later this year.
The public body landscape is varied, with organisations carrying out different roles and functions. League tables should not be made between public bodies due to the distinct nature of each body – for example, differences in size, budgets, structure, functions. Additionally, some bodies raise revenue and fees, which may cover expenditure to different extents.
Data caveats
For a full summary of data caveats please refer to the accompanying dataset.
The statistics presented here should be interpreted in the context of the commission’s scope. Percentages are as a proportion of the costs and FTE reported in this commission, and not as a proportion of staffing and expenditure in the public sector as a whole.
Public bodies were asked to provide information for six corporate functions only, meaning the dataset does not represent a comprehensive account of all corporate function expenditure. In addition, the corporate function definitions used can legitimately include activities that supports or enables frontline services. Full definitions of the corporate functions used are included in the accompanying dataset.
Previously published data
Scottish Government previously published as an ad-hoc Management Information release data on public bodies' 2022-23 corporate functions costs, as well as other managed costs. Care should be taken when comparing these two data sources on both totals and a public body basis. While many of the data fields are conceptually similar, this collection asked for more granular breakdowns of spend, which may have impacted judgements of what to include. Furthermore, this 2023-24 and 2024-25 collection allowed for a more detailed quality assurance process than previously possible.
The 2022-23 collection also required all public bodies to disaggregate their costs into the six corporate functions, while this iteration allowed aggregate returns for smaller organisations. Finally, health boards are not included in this provisional release, and some public bodies included here may not be in the 2022-23 publication.
Contact
corporatefunctiondata@gov.scot