Breakdown of recover, renew transform (RRT) budget spending: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for a breakdown of how the £50 million budget allocated to the ‘recover, renew, transform’ fund in the justice portfolio is being spent. Please breakdown all spending and when it has been spent or is planned on being spent.

Response

I have delayed providing an immediate response to your initial request until now so that I am able to more fully reflect our current understanding of how the Recover, Renew and Transform (RRT) programme budget is being utilised.

The £50m is intended to be spent over the course of the 2021/22 financial year. While indicative allocations of the funding have been agreed, known specific expenditure and planned expenditure can be broken down as follows (we do not hold detail on what has been spent to date and/ or when for
Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service/Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, as they will manage that through their own processes and you may wish to contact them for further information):

Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service - £29m. This can be broken down to reflect expenditure on additional jury trials (£26,449k), Summary (£2,546k) with key spend items within the total including: Accommodation hire together with associated utilities, cleaning and security costs £16,912k; Pay £6,777k; Building works £1,382k; Digital infrastructure/IT £1,356k; Judges £1,096k and Catering £478k.

Crown Office and procurator Fiscal Service - £5m. With additional court sittings COPFS will require additional staff to prepare cases and attend court above business as usual activity. A further £2m may be spent later this financial year.

Community Justice - £11.8m - to be utilised by justice social work services to respond to the impact of the pandemic, by helping build capacity to respond and contribute to the recovery efforts across the justice system during these unprecedented and challenging times.

The remaining budget will be utilised across the Scottish Police Authority, Scottish Prisons Service and the Sottish Legal Aid Board.

About FOI
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.