Social Security Scotland's budget spent by staff travelling to offices: FOI release

Information requested

How much money in Social Security Scotland's budget was spent having staff travel to different office locations in 2023/2024, so far. How much money was spent for staff travelling from Dundee to Glasgow offices and is there any criteria to determine if a journey is essential and, as such, that the tax payer should be paying for a train ticket or hired car?

Response

We have interpreted your request to relate to spend on travel to attend our Dundee Headquarters and Glasgow office. While our aim is to provide information wherever possible, in this instance Social Security Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested.

We do not hold the information you requested for hire cars. Social Security Scotland supports our most vulnerable clients by providing a home visiting service and in order to protect client confidentiality and comply with GDPR regulations, hire car journeys are not recorded by destination. Therefore, we cannot identify journeys undertaken to attend our offices.

The information below covers rail and air travel costs from 6 April 2023 to 9 October 2023.

• Rail travel to Dundee = £33,140.65
•  Rail travel to Glasgow = £26,297.65

Local Delivery colleagues providing face to face support to clients based in the island communities will have occasion to attend meetings on the mainland and, depending on circumstances, will travel by air.

• Air travel to Dundee/Glasgow = £1,369.10

All travel requests are subject to sign off by a senior manager who must be satisfied the journey is essential and that the most efficient, economic and environmentally sound means of travel are taken.

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.