Breakdown of staff and annual spend on Scottish Government international offices: FOI release

Information requested

A breakdown of the yearly totally spend on each of our international offices, including office maintenance, expenditure on events, travel and salaries.

A breakdown of the number of staff on each Scottish Government pay band in each of these offices.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount of the information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. This is because it is personal data of a third party, specifically the salaries of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

The table below details staff headcount including the current annual budget allocation for the Scottish Government’s overseas offices, including salary costings, upkeep, day-today running and hospitality costs.

OFFICE	BUDGET FOR (2021-22)	STAFF HEADCOUNT	STAFF PAY BANDS
Beijing, China	550,000	4	1 x A-C Band 3 x Country Based Staff
Berlin, Germany	555,000	3	1 x A-C Band 1 x Country Based Staff
Brussels, Belgium	2,310,000	18*	1 x Director 1 x Deputy Director 6 x C Band 3 x B Band 7 x Country Based Staff
Dublin, Ireland	596,000	3	2 x A-C Band 1 x Country Based Staff
London, England	2,197,000	16	1 x Deputy Director 2 x C Band 9 x B Band 4 x A Band
Ottawa, Canada	570,000	4	2 x A-C Band 2 x Country Based Staff
Paris, France	556,000	3	2 x A-C Band 1 x Country Based Staff
Washington DC, United States	805,000	4	2 x A-C Band 2 x Country Based Staff

* 2 of these posts are funded by a combination of Ministerial Portfolios due to the nature of their roles.
**Country Based Staff are not on Scottish Government pay bandings, their salaries are based on their location.

Staff salaries have been included in the total running costs of each office in the table above and staff pay bands have been provided for each office. Due to the small number of staff members in some of these offices we are unable to disclose the specific pay band. The table below includes details of the Scottish Governments pay banding from April 2021.

	A3	A4	B1	B2	B3	BF	C1	C2	C3
Max-3			26,995	31,266	39,312	31,008	49,420	64,698	74,779
Max-2	20,864	24,184	27,693	32,781	40,457	33,932	53,003	66,948	75,633
Max-1	21,948	24,907	28,736	34,297	42,616	35,888	56,684	69,855	76,486
Max	23,032	25,709	29,776	35,813	47,065	38,330	61,617	74,675	77,340

As part of our commitment to be an open and transparent government we do disclose salary details of senior civil servants, salary bands for those in our overseas offices are below.

Director of Brussels	£95,930 - £103,495
Deputy Director of Brussels	£77,340 - £83,233
Deputy Director – Head of Scotland House, London	£77,340 - £83,233

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