Financial support for Scottish Development Centre: FOI release

Information requested

• What amount of funding did the Scottish Government give to the Scottish Development Education Centre (Scotdec) in the financial year 2021/22 (or the latest year for which information is available)?
• Has the Scottish Government made an ongoing financial commitment to Scotdec?

Response

In response to your first question on the funding given to Scotdec, I can confirm that the Scottish Government has not funded Scotdec directly, but instead it has provided a total amount to cover all five of the Development Education Centres (DECs) operating across Scotland.

The below table shows the total funding for the DECs as a whole during the last two financial years. The specific portion of the overall amounts subsequently allocated to Scotdec is determined by DECs.

Financial Year	2021-22	2022-23
Grant Funding Allocated to DECs (£)	£310,550	£300,000

To enquire how much of the above funding has been allocated to Scotdec, you may wish to contact the West of Scotland Development Education Centre (WOSDEC) which manages grant activity on behalf of all DECs. WOSDEC can be contacted at enquiries@wosdec.org.uk. Alternatively, some financial information can be accessed via OSCR, the Scottish charity regulator. Its charity register is available at https://www.oscr.org.uk/about-charities/search-the-register/register-search/.

I turn now to your second question on our ongoing financial commitment to Scotdec (DECs).

The Scottish Government has not made any funding commitment to the Development Education Centres beyond 2022/23. As with other funded programmes, funding to Scotdec and the other DECs is provided via an annual grant agreement which comes up for renewal on an annual basis. There is no guarantee of funding from one year until the next. Annual grant funding is dependent on receiving a suitable grant proposal for the next again financial year, as well as a review of outcomes and outputs from the previous year's grant funding.

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.