Barnett Westminster funds withheld from councils by the Scottish Government: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/19/00020  
Date received: 25 December 2018
Date responded: 25 January 2019

 

 

“Will you provide full details of the funds from Barnett paid by Westminster, but withheld from councils by the Scottish Government during the period 2017/18.

This information is not available from the SG web site as was indicated in your recent letter.”

 

 

Thank you for your email of 25 December indicating that you were unable to find the information you required on the Scottish Government website.

 

As I mentioned in my letter of 18 December, all Barnett consequentials accrue to the Scottish Government as a whole and it is then for Scottish Ministers to decide how they should be allocated.  They are not ring fenced for a particular purpose and as such nothing has been “withheld from councils”.  Ministers are clear that they have treated Local Government fairly in allocating funding to them.  Local Government settlements in Scotland have not reduced to the extent that funding for Local Government in England has.  Local Government in England has faced cuts of 28% in real terms between 2011 to 2018.  In Scotland the comparable figure is 5%.  Cuts to Local Government funding in England feed through to Scotland via the operation of the Barnett formula.

I reattach the link where you can see latest details of individual Barnett consequential allocations for your information

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/block-grant-transparency-december-2018

I trust you will find this information useful.

 

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses