Funding made available by the Scottish and UK Governments to Western Isles Council from 1975 to April 2026: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
“Under a freedom of information act could you make available to me how much [monies] were made available from the Scottish/ Uk governments to the Western Isles Council since 1975 until April 2026. Approx 51 years.”
Response
The Scottish Government has provided some of the information you asked for and information successfully retrieved has been provided in full for Scottish Government funding allocated to Western Isles Council, as part of the Local Government Finance settlement. Information not held is detailed in Annex A.
It should be noted that funding for Police and Fire transferred out of the Local Government Finance settlement with effect from 1 April 2013. As a result, the years before 2013-14, and years from 2013-14 are not comparable.
For ease of access, the information provided includes a full breakdown in Table 1 of Scottish Government funding allocated to Western Isles Council, as part of the Local Government Finance settlement, for the period 2013-14 to 2026-27.
In addition, Table 2 provides a full breakdown of Scottish Government funding allocated to Western Isles Council, as part of the Local Government Finance settlement for the period 1998-99 to 2012-13. It should be noted that local authority breakdowns of capital funding allocations are only available from 2007-08 onwards.
Both tables are provided in MS Excel & Adobe PDF formats and include hyperlinks to the relevant Local Government Finance Circulars published on the Scottish Government website, which provide a full breakdown of the allocations by local authority. All Local Government Finance Circulars are published here: https://www.gov.scot/collections/local-government-finance-circulars/
You may be aware that 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.
Further manual searches (which may exceed the upper cost limit) would be required to ascertain if archival paper records exist for the period 1975-1997. If you would like to request a cost estimate for conducting manual searches then please contact us at the earliest opportunity.
ANNEX A
The Scottish Government does not hold the information requested
The Scottish Government does not hold some of the information you have asked for because any direct UK Government funding to Scottish Local Authorities bypasses the Scottish Government, so we do not hold these records. You may be able to obtain this information from the UK Government or alternatively Western Isles Council may hold records of their funding from UK Government.
As such, I hereby provide you with formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold this information.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG