Scottish Government employee expenses information: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for ‘Spending by the Scottish Government, either directly or via expenses/reimbursements paid to staff, on ordering fast food, in 2024. Break this down by fast food restaurant.

This should include (but not be limited to) spending on Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa Johns, McDonalds, Burger King, KFC, Subway, and other fast food restaurants.’

Response

The electronic purchasing card is closed to the category ‘restaurants and bars’ and so it would only be under expenses that such spending could be incurred. Whilst our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600.

By way of providing relevant context, as is standard practice in employment and is provided for within HMRC guidance, if an employee is required by their employer to work away from their contractual work location, they are entitled to reimbursement of reasonable expenses that are incurred on travel and subsistence. The Scottish Government’s expense rates for subsistence are as follows:

Day subsistence over 5 hours	Receipted up to £4.90 per day
Day subsistence over 10 hours	Receipted up to £10.70 per day
Day subsistence over 12 hours	Receipted up to £15.60 per day
Foreign travel subsistence	Receipted, per night/day (travel and subsistence team advise on upper limits)
Meals allowance London (for overnight travel)	Receipted up to £24.10 per night
Meals allowance elsewhere (for overnight travel)	Receipted up to £23.50 per night
Meals elsewhere - dinner only	Receipted up to £18.60
Meals elsewhere - lunch only	Receipted up to £4.90
Meals London - dinner only	Receipted up to £19.20
Meals London - lunch only	Receipted up to £4.90
Non-standard subsistence rates	Receipted, per night/day - contact the travel and subsistence team before using this. This expense type will be audited by the travel and subsistence team

It is a matter of personal choice for employees where they chose to purchase their meals within these limits.

Claims for reimbursement are submitted by employees using our expenses system and are subject to approval by their line manager. While our expenses system records the expense type (e.g. ‘day subsistence over 5 hours’), it does not record the retailer where an expense was incurred and the detail would only be found on the accompanying receipt. This would involve looking at every day subsistence or meals allowance claim to review the accompanying receipt and, for example, in the period October to December 2024 alone, there were 4177 lines within expense claims that would need drilled down into to review each receipt. Prior to October 2024, receipts were not uploaded electronically to the expenses system and were kept locally within Directorates. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12 and which would be substantially exceeded in relation to this request.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. This could involve requesting the total expenditure on day subsistence by Scottish Government staff for the last financial year. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: 

http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

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.