Public bodies expenditure breakdown: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.


Information requested

  • A breakdown of funding provided in the 2022-23 financial year to public bodies excluding health & social care in reference to the figure from the first column of Table 1 in the public bodies expenditure: aggregated data for 2022-23 release as the baseline for funding provided to public bodies; and
  • This breakdown for each financial year going back to 2015-16.

Response

Some of the information you have requested is available from the breakdown of funding by public body which was published shortly after the aggregate Public bodies expenditure 22-23 data. This can be found online at: https://www.gov.scot/publications/public-bodies-corporate-function-data-data-as-atfinancial-year-2022-23/ in the excel workbook that refers to Microdata.

As noted in the original release this data is an ad-hoc release of management information, which was collated by requesting data from more than 100 individual public bodies. Therefore, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

Some of the information you have requested is available in for some public bodies the summary of budgeted annual expenditure on the Scottish Government website. Please find the following links for information going back to 2015/16:

2023/24: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2023-24/documents/
2022/23: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2022-23/documents/
2021/22: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2021-22/documents/
2020/21: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2020-21/documents/
2019/20: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-2019-20/documents/
2018/19: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-budget-draft-budget-2018-19/documents/
2017/18: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-budget-draft-budget-2017-18/documents/
2016/17: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scotlands-finances-key-facts-figures/documents/
2015/16: https://dera.ioe.ac.uk/id/eprint/21090/1/00460440.pdf

The budget bill is disaggregated at different levels. Level 1 is the overall portfolio, L2 lines are the main funding areas within each portfolio and there is further disaggregation of the budget down to Level 4. The main budget bill document shows the budgets down to Level 3. A detailed spreadsheet is published alongside the budget bill, called ‘Scottish Budget - Level 4 Data’. If the public bodies you are interested in is not detailed within the main Budget Bill document, this spreadsheet can be searched to find the initial allocations down to Level 4 across all the portfolios. However, the budget bill does not show every single public body separately at a disaggregated level. A lot of public bodies are individually included within the budget bill, but some, particularly the smaller ones, are merged with other areas within one L4 portfolio line. This is particularly the case with the portfolios covering Justice and Education expenditure, given the volume of public bodies in these areas.

Funding provided by the Scottish Government to each public body is included in the published audited accounts for each of these organisations. As part of the financial statements, within the Statement of Changes of Tax Payers Equity, there will be reference to Scottish Government Funding. These accounts can be found online on the public bodies' websites - links to these are provided on the National public bodies: directory (https://www.gov.scot/publications/national-public-bodies-directory/).

About FOI

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

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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