NHS communications employee data: FOI release

Information requested

1. The total amount spent on NHS communications staff employed by the Health and Social Care Directorate - broken down by the financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 (most recent).

2. The total number of staff currently employed in a communications role, broken down by role and salary (as of 1 April 2025).

3. The total number of posts currently unfilled/vacant (as of 1 April 2025).

Response

Please find a table of the information you requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance The Scottish Government is unable to provide some of the information you have requested because the information is not held. The reasons why some of the information is not held includes:

Civil servants work on a variety of different topics, projects, or pieces of work at any given time. Time spent on any specific area (such as time spent by the central communications department on exclusive NHS-related communications) is not always automatically accounted or held, so a calculation of Civil Servants' time (and, therefore, associated cost) cannot be provided.

Additionally, due to the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic response, it is not possible to retrospectively track all individuals who contributed to NHS communications efforts during that period.

Where the request refers to staffing levels of fewer than five, disclosing job titles and associated salaries could risk identifying individuals. In accordance with Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this information is considered personal data and is therefore withheld under the Data Protection Act 2018.

Question One – Provide, broken down by the financial years 2019/20, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23, 2023/24, 2024/25 and 2025/26 (most recent): The total amount spent on all communications staff employed by your department.

Year	Cost
2019/20	£235,379
2020/21	£320,147
2021/22	£429,963
2022/23	£524,694
2023/24	£465,742
2024/25	£319,867
2025/26 – as of 31st July 2025	£97,776

Please note that these figures includes a member of staff who works on the management and delivery of NHS Scotland Events. They have been included to reflect their work, as part of that wider role, to promote and communicate about these events only and do not have a wider NHS communications role.

Similarly the 2023/24 and 2024/25 figure includes a member of staff working across NHS communications and SG policy. We are unable to calculate the exact time (and associated costs) spent specifically on NHS related communications. Instead we have included the total cost for this member of staff.

Question Two – As of 1 April 2025: the total number of staff currently employed in a communications role, broken down by role and salary.

Exemption applied

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to the information requested because it is personal data of third parties.

There are so few staff currently employed in specific NHS communications roles that breaking the requested information down by role and salary would risk the identification of these individuals and result in the disclosure of their personal information.

Disclosing the information would then contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

In the interest of supporting your request, we can confirm that as of June 2025 there are currently two staff employed in NHS communications roles. The grades of these staff are B and C grade, with salaries in the follow ranges

B2: £36,944 - £42,244

C2: £74,480 – £85,964.

Question Three – As of 1 April 2025: the total number of posts currently unfilled/vacant.

There are currently no vacant NHS communications posts.

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.