Grading of staff within the Directorate General of Health and Social Care: FOI release

Information requested

1. A current breakdown of all staff grades within the Scottish Government’s Healthcare Standards Directorate (or equivalent Health Department), including:

• Grade titles (e.g., B1, B2, C1, C2, etc.)
• The number of staff in each grade
• Salary ranges associated with each grade
• Job descriptions or typical responsibilities by grade, if available

2. Any internal guidance or policy documents used for determining grading structures or pay bands within the Health Department - including how many staff were promoted in-house and not through the organisation’s internal vacancy scheme over the last 5 years.

Response

The answers to your questions are:

1. The table below shows the grade titles and the number of staff within each grade across the Directorate General of Health and Social Care (DGHSC), as of 31 May 2025.

Pay Grade	Number of Colleagues
SCS (Senior Civil Service): Deputy Director, Director, Director General	39
C3	24
C2	142
C1	284
BFS	5
B3	338
B2	234
B1	112
A4	37
A3	16
Total	1231

The salary ranges associated with pay grades A, B and C are publicly available and can be found here: Financial rewards - Scottish Government Jobs

Senior Civil Service Pay is reserved to the UK Government and the latest information on UK wide salary scales by SCS grade is publicly available and can be found here: REVISED_-_SCS_pay_2025_Practitioner_Guide_.pdf

The salaries for Scottish Government Senior Civil Service staff in the grades of Director General and Directors, including those within DGHSC, are publicly available and can be found here: Senior Civil Service pay: March 2025 - gov.scot

Job descriptions are unique to each post; however, Scottish Government has benchmarking guidance which provides information on typical role responsibilities by grade. This has been provided separately to this letter.

2. The benchmarking guidance which has been provided separately, is also used for determining the appropriate grading structure and pay bands for roles across Scottish Government, including within DGHSC. The Scottish Government is bound by the Civil Service Commission requirements and any recruitment must be on merit and on the basis of fair and open competition. There is no facility for staff to move into a higher graded permanent civil service post outside of this process.

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.

FOI 202500472471 - Information released - Annex

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