Communication costs for Constitution, Culture and External Affairs: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for how much money has been spent on press and communication support for the Constitution, external affairs and culture portfolio in each of the last five years, with a breakdown per year and what the staff were assigned to, i.e. culture or independence. You also asked us to supply the number of press officers utilised in these roles.

Response

For your first question, we have interpreted this to mean the cost of staff working in Communications: 

News that are specifically aligned to the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture portfolio. This team works on all policy areas that are the responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture and are responsible for writing and producing content for the media and social media.

Unfortunately, we are unable to provide a breakdown of costs to this level of detail. This is because staff in Communications: News work flexibly across portfolios and move across teams throughout the year. Therefore, we do not hold accurate costs for the financial year at this level of detail.

This is a formal notice under section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) that the Scottish Government does not hold some of the information you have requested.

The Scottish Government proactively publishes the costs of all press officers working in Communications: News on our website. Please see a link to this information: Communications staff (press officers): costs - gov.scot

On the second part of your request related to the number of press officers for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture portfolio, I have enclosed some of the information you have requested. Due to staff working flexibly across portfolios in response to changing priorities and the news agenda, the number of staff within each team varies throughout the year. Therefore, we have provided you with the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff within the team on 31 March for the last five years. This is to enable accurate comparisons between years. These figures are a snapshot and do not represent either a total number, or average number, of staff employed in the year.

Year	FTE
31 March 2021	6
31 March 2022	6
31 March 2023	4
31 March 2024	4
31 March 2025	4

As above, this team works on all policy areas that are the responsibility of the Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs and Culture. I am unable to provide you a more detailed breakdown of what these staff were assigned to i.e. culture or independence because in line with usual practice, details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on them, are not routinely recorded because there is no business need to do this.

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.

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.