Fair Work First: grants awarded - July 2023 to March 2024

Fair Work First is our key policy for driving fair work practices across the labour market. It applies fair work principles to public sector grants, contracts, and other funding.

We introduced Fair Work First conditionality for public sector grants awarded on or after 1 July 2023.

To understand the use of conditionality in the first year, and the approval of exceptions, Fair Work Policy officials issued an information request to public sector funders in Spring 2024. This request asked for returns covering administrative data between July 2023 and March 2024. 

Based on the responses, an overview of the data is below. It breaks down the number of grants, their value, and the number of exceptions. It also lists the sectors where exceptions were approved and if they involved all or part of the workforce. This does not represent a complete picture of each and every grant awarded by the public sector.

Data

In addition to the Scottish Government, this request was sent to 127 public bodies, of which 42 responded. Of the 42 public bodies who responded, 27 provided a nil return, therefore grant spend is only captured from 15 public bodies. The request was also sent to the 32 local authorities, of which 8 responded.

Based on the information available, 3868 grants, with a total value of £2,571.3 million were awarded across the public sector between 1 July 2023 and 31 March 2024. A breakdown of the data gathered is provided in the tables below.

It should be noted that:

• the tables below does not provide a complete picture of every grant awarded by the Scottish public sector and relates to survey respondents only.
• the conditionality does not apply to grant in aid / non-discretionary grant funding so the value of this funding is not included.
• public sector organisations in receipt of grant funding from the Scottish Government may use this to award further grants so the overall value of grants awarded may include double-counting.

Table 1: Breakdown of grants awarded and exceptions approved in period 1 July 2023 - 31 March 2024

Table 2: Breakdown of organisations with an approved exception by sector

Table 3: Breakdown of approved exceptions for parts and whole of the workforce