Scottish Government and public bodies (including NHS healthcare organisations) corporate function data, 2023-24 and 2024-25

Key findings

1. Costs of functions

Totals: core Scottish Government and public bodies (including NHS healthcare organisations)

In total for the financial year (FY) 2024-25, across core Scottish Government and public bodies (including NHS healthcare organisations), this data release captures £1.7bn of spending in the running of the six corporate functions. The largest of this spend is accounted for by Digital and Data functions, at £686m (39%). This is followed by Property at £482m (28%), Human Resources at £209m (12%), Finance at £192m (11%), Commercial at £82m (5%) and Communications at £80m (5%).

Paybill accounts for 60% (£1bn) of corporate function spend reported in this commission, followed by direct costs at 22% (£386m), other costs at 4% (£72m) and contingent labour at 4% (£64m) (see Annex B below for details of the cost categories).

Complexities within NHS healthcare organisations financial recording did not allow for all costs to be apportioned as effectively as for other public bodies. As a result, NHS healthcare organisations account for 99% of the spend recorded as other costs.

Public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations) were the largest contributor towards contingent labour costs at £56m (88% of total contingent labour costs identified), followed by NHS healthcare organisations at £4m (7%) then core Scottish Government at £3m (5%).

Core Scottish Government

Of the total costs identified in this publication for 2024-25, core Scottish Government central corporate functions accounted for a total of £86m (5%). Of the total core Scottish Government corporate function spend, around a quarter (23%) were accounted for by the Commercial function at £20m. This was followed by Human Resources at £16m (18%), Digital and Data at £15m (18%), Communications at £13m (15%), Finance at £11m (13%) and Property at £11m (12%).

Of total core Scottish Government spend on central corporate functions, paybill accounted for 77% (£66m), followed by direct costs for 18% (£15m). Contingent labour costs comprised 4% (£3m) of the identified costs.

Public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations)

Of the total costs in this publication for 2024-25, public bodies’ (excluding NHS healthcare organisations) corporate functions accounted for a total of £512m (29%). Over two-fifths (44%) of this spend was accounted for by Digital and Data functions, at £226m. This is followed by Human Resources (£88m, 17%), Finance (£75m, 15%), Communications (£52m, 10%), Commercial (£35m, 7%) and Property functions (£29m, 6%). A small amount of spend (£8m, 1%) was categorised as aggregate corporate function spend and has not been disaggregated to the six functions.

Of the total public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations) costs for corporate functions, paybill was the largest contributor at 73% (£373m), followed by contingent labour (£56m, 11%) and direct costs (£36m, 7%).

Contingent labour costs for public bodies were mostly driven by the Digital and Data functions, which accounted for 89% of reported contingent labour cost spend in 2024-25 (£50m).

NHS healthcare organisations

NHS healthcare organisations comprised £1.1bn of the total identified corporate function costs in 2024-25 (66%). The functions associated with the highest costs were the Digital and Data and Property functions at 39% of the total identified costs (£446m and £443m respectively). This was followed by Human Resources (£106m, 9%), Finance (£105m, 9%), Commercial (£27m, 2%) and Communications (£16m, 1%).

For NHS healthcare organisations, paybill contributed the most, at 53% of the overall costs identified (£603m), followed by direct costs (£335m, 29%) and other costs (£71m, 6%).

Change from 2023-24 to 2024-25

Overall, reported corporate function costs increased by 5% (£83m) across core Scottish Government and all public bodies included in this data commission between 2023-24 and 2024-25. This change is a net result of increases and decreases across spend categories. For example, while reported paybill costs increased by £72m, contingent labour costs decreased by £9m. Furthermore, around £2m of the overall increase is a result of data for one public body only being reported in 2024-25. Note that these totals are not representative of the entire public sector as this dataset does not contain all public bodies in Scotland.

2. Sizes of functions

At year-end 2024-25, a total of 18,530 FTE were reported to be directly employed across the six functions in scope for core Scottish Government and the public bodies (including NHS healthcare organisations), and 670 contingent labour FTE. This represents a 0.5% increase and a 21% decrease respectively to reported 2023-24 figures.

Of the total identified FTE employed across the corporate functions, 1,130 were employed by core Scottish Government, with a further 5,880 employed by non-healthcare public bodies. The remaining 11,530 directly employed FTE were employed by NHS healthcare organisations.

The functions with the highest reported FTE of the six functions across core Scottish Government, public bodies and NHS healthcare organisations in 2024-25 were Property (5,450) and Digital and Data (5,320) accounting for 29% each of reported directly employed corporate function FTE.

3. Spend managed by functions and funding passed to organisations

In total, in 2024-25, there was a reported £11bn in third-party expenditure. This consisted of £6bn by NHS healthcare organisations, £4bn by other public bodies and £541m by core Scottish Government.

A total of £1.4bn in estate running costs was reported to be managed by Property functions in 2024-25, with £1bn managed by NHS healthcare organisations, £289m managed by public bodies and £26m managed by core Scottish Government.

Across core Scottish Government and public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations), £12m was managed by the Human resources function for Learning and Development and £18m managed by the Communications functions for external communications. NHS healthcare organisations have been excluded from this comparison due to differences in financial recording processes.

Across core Scottish Government and public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations), spend on running and improving the IT and digital estate across public bodies was reported as £316m, with a further £149m spend on digital transformation. NHS healthcare organisations have been excluded from this comparison due to differences in financial recording processes.

This release contains data relating to funding passed through to organisations and citizens. This data captures where Scottish Government or public bodies have passed through funding other than for the provision of goods or services. This may include, for example, grant payments or grant-in-aid payments.

Public bodies (excluding NHS healthcare organisations) in scope reported passing a total of £9.9bn of funding to the public sector, private sector, third sector and citizens in 2024-25. Of this, £6bn was passed to citizens, £2.3bn to the public sector, £981m to the third sector, and £591m to the private sector. Overall, this total represented a 10% increase in funding passed to these groups between 2023-24 and 2024-25.

In 2024-25, core Scottish Government passed a total of £22bn to the public sector, private sector, third sector and citizens. Of this, £21bn was passed to the public sector, £780m to the private sector, £225m was passed to citizens and £119m was passed to the third sector.

It should be noted that funding passed to public sector organisations may include instances where core Scottish Government (or public bodies) have passed funds to other public sector organisations included in this data release. For this reason, care should be taken when looking at data relating to funding passed, as there is risk of double counting.

For example, if core Scottish Government pass funds to a public body contained within this publication, this will be counted under Scottish Government’s funding passed through to public sector organisations. If the same public body then passes funding on (to either an organisation or citizen) it will then be counted under that public body. This would therefore allow for situations where funding is double counted, as the same funding could be counted under two different organisations.

As mentioned above, complexities in NHS healthcare organisations financial records did not allow for accurate data collection on certain managed spends. This includes funding passed through to organisations, which has not been included in this publication.