Local authority participatory budgeting: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for:

1. Each year from 2017 to 2025, how much money in each Scottish local authority's budget was subject to participatory budgeting.

2. Each year from 2017 to 2025, what percentage of each Scottish local authority's budget was subject to participatory budgeting (for the purpose of assessing progress toward the ScottishGovernment target of 1% PB spending in local governments).

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. The Scottish Government only holds a collective total from all 32 local authorities on participatory processes, which includes participatory budgeting. This information is provided by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) for the Scottish Government and was first reported in 2020/21.

	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24
1% Target	£106m	£108m	£118m	£123m
Budget Reported	£79m	£154m	£152m	£195m
% Reported	0.7%	1.4%	1.3%	1.5%

As such, I hereby provide you with formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have 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.