Piloting an Approach to Identifying Preventative Spend in the Scottish Budget

Annex G – Net Zero and Energy Pilot

Introduction

As part of the Preventative spend pilot programme, a pilot study was developed with the Net Zero and Energy Portfolio to understand how prevention features in spending across the portfolio. This Annex covers the approach taken in the pilot and some of the aggregate results generated from the pilot study.

Note these results should be taken as preliminary and treated with caution. Results could change between the pilot phase and the final preventative spend estimates planned for Summer 2026.

Approach

The pilot was designed to cover a sub-set of Level 4 budget lines in the Social Justice Portfolio that cover a mix of different types of spend (preventative and non-preventative) and different levels of prevention (if preventative).

The final scope included 12 Level 4 budget lines, which is approximately 31% of the total number of level 4 lines in the NZE portfolio (39). These 19 budget lines accounted for around £143m (104% of total spend).^[20]

The lines included in the pilot are shown in Figure 38.

• Noise and Air Quality Action
• Water Environment
• Flood Risk Management
• Nature Restoration
• SEPA
• Nature Scot
• Zero Waste
• Zero Waste Scotland

Note: there are multiple Level 4 Budget lines covered by organisations such as SEPA, Nature Scot, and Zero Waste Scotland.

The Level 4 Budget lines included in the pilot varied significantly in terms of value, and scope of activities covered within each line. In some cases, a simple tag was applied to the Level 4 Budget line. This was the case for Flood Risk Management, Water Environment, Nature Restoration and Noise and Air Quality Action. For some of the larger budget lines, we used additional budget information or data to apportion activity. This approach was used for lines such as SEPA, Nature Scot, Zero Waste and Zero Waste Scotland.

Figure 39 – Net Zero and Energy Portfolio Examples of planned spend within each element of the classification

Classification: Examples

Primary Prevention

• SEPA spending on net zero and water environment priorities
• NatureScot spending on priorities around protecting nature (e.g. biodiversity) and restoring nature (e.g. peatland restoration)
• Water Environment – activity to protect water environment
• Air Quality Action Plan – action to support air quality

Secondary Prevention

• SEPA – warning systems (e.g. weather alerts).

Tertiary Prevention

• N/A

Enabling

• NatureScot – activity to improve how nature is valued in public policy
• Zero Waste Scotland – research/ analysis/ policy development targets at changing consumer and business behaviour on waste and overconsumption

Acute/ responsive/ treatment

• SEPA – activity related to climate resilience (weather alerts, etc) and responding to fly tipping, etc

Other

• NatureScot – organisational development and staff
• Zero Waste Scotland – investment in improvement of statutory waste management services, organisational development, staff.
• Scottish Government internal staff costs
• Waste Management

Results

This section sets out the results from the budget tagging exercise for those budget areas covered as part of the NZE Portfolio.

Note these results should be taken as preliminaryand could change between the pilot phase and the final 2025/26 budgeted preventative spend estimates planned for Summer 2026 . Caution should also be taken when drawing broader conclusions and comparing against other portfolios, given the exercise only covers a sub-set of the budget. The final aggregate results for the full portfolio (planned Summer 2026) may look significantly different from the sample of pilot lines.

Preventative spend

The pilot study found that around 57% of the Net Zero and Environment budgeted 2025/26 spend covered in the pilot can be defined as preventative (around £81m) (Figure 40). A further 26% was tagged as enabling (£37m), while 12% was found to be acute/ responsive (£17m), and 27% “Other/ general service” (£8m).

Level of prevention

Of the planned preventative spend recorded, 88% of this was classified as primary prevention (£71m). A further 12% was classified as secondary prevention, with no tertiary spend recorded (Figure 41).