COVID 19 Scottish Borders Council pandemic response funding: FOI release

Information requested

"How much additional Covid-related funding has local authority, the Scottish Borders Council, received to date from the Scottish Government? I am particularly interested in additional funding provided to support key public services such as public toilet provision. Many public toilets in the Scottish Borders remain closed, with Covid being voted as the reason by Council officials and elected representatives.”

Response

To date, Scottish Borders Council have been allocated an additional £30.1 million to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, through the local government settlement - over and above their regular grant payments.

Furthermore in 2021-22, Scottish Borders Council will receive a total funding package of £265.4 million to support local services, which includes an extra £9.2 million to support vital day to day services, equivalent to an increase of 4.1 per cent compared to 2020-21.

However, the Scottish Government’s policy towards local authorities’ spending is to allow local authorities the financial freedom to operate independently. As such, the vast majority of funding is provided by means of a block grant. It is then the responsibility of individual local authorities to manage their own budgets and to allocate the total financial resources available to them, including on matters such as public toilet provision, on the basis of local needs and priorities, having first fulfilled their statutory obligations and the jointly agreed set of national and local priorities.

It may be helpful to know that we routinely publish local authority funding figures online in the Local Government Finance Circulars, which can be found at the link below:

www.gov.scot/collections/local-government-finance-circulars

Further information on making a Freedom of Information request to Scottish Borders Council can be found at the link below:

www.scotborders.gov.uk/info/20060/access_to_information/347/making_an_information_request

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.