Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 spend: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide details of spending by the Scottish Government to implement the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 within schools and further/higher education institutions. This should include:

• Total funding allocated to local authorities, schools, colleges or universities.
• Internal administrative and programme costs.
• Communications or promotional campaigns.

Please provide a breakdown by financial year from 2021–22 to 2025–26 (to date).

Response

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. The reasons why we do not have the information are explained below.

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

In responding to your request information is only provided from 2022/23 onward as no funding was allocated in relation to implementation of the Act in 2021/22, and the Act did not come into force until August 2022. However information on funding allocated to local authorities, colleges and universities in 2021/22 is available in the published response to a previous Freedom of Information Request.

Total funding allocated to local authorities, colleges or universities to implement the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 (the Act) broken down by financial year 2022/23 to 2025/26 is set out in the table below.

	2022/23[1]	2023/24	2024/25	2025/26
Local authorities	£5,021,000	£5,233,000	£4,868,000	N/A[2]
Colleges	£365,900	£382,715	£357,000	£357,000[3]
Universities	£945,000	£880,250	£880,250	£880,250[3]

Internal administrative and programme costs

The Scottish Government is not able to provide a breakdown of the internal administrative and programme costs involved in implementing the Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Act 2021 within schools and further/higher education institutions. This is because the Scottish Government officials involved in this work were also working on other policies during the time and the element of their costs associated with individual policies is not available.

Communication and promotional campaigns

Local authorities, colleges and universities were permitted to use some of their allocated funding to support communication and promotional activities. However the Scottish Government did not collect data specifically on spend on these activities, therefore cannot provide information on these costs specifically.

[1] These figures include funding for the voluntary arrangements that were in place prior to the Act coming into force in August 2022.

[2] Funding for local authorities of £4.868 million was baselined into the General revenue grant in 2024/25 therefore no ring-fenced funding was allocated to meet their duties under the Act in 2025/26 or future years.

[3] College and university funding has been baselined in 2025/26 therefore no further ring-fenced funding will be provided to colleges and universities to meet their duties under the Act after the current financial year.

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