Scottish Government communication staff: FOI release

Information requested

1. The number of communications staff.

2. A breakdown of these staff by job description and/or job title (e.g. number of press officers, heads of press office, directors of communications, social media staff, etc) and for each, their salary bands.

3. If available or applicable, please provide a breakdown of the above details by each government department.

Response

1/2. The number of communications staff as of 31 December 2021 is set out in the table below.

The Scottish Government has a central Communications Division with specialised staff who deliver the following functions; frontline communication staff/press officers, public information and behaviour change marketing campaigns, strategy & behavioural insight, Brand Scotland brand marketing (cross organisational partnership), cross government strategic communications, digital platforms (including gov.scot) and social content function, media monitoring, internal organisation engagement and business administration management.

Year	FTE Communications Staff
2021-22	175.65*

A breakdown of FTE frontline communications staff/press officers are detailed below.

Year	FTE Frontline Communications Staff/Press Officers
2021-22	54.77*

*FTE figures are from December 31 2021

The numbers of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff in the Communications Division varies throughout the financial year and the figures represent staff numbers on that day. In this case on December 31 2021. This means that these figures are a 'snapshot': they do not represent either a total number or average number of staff employed in the year.

Below is total FTE per grade within the Communications Division.

Salary Band	FTE *
A Band	7
B Band	132.30
C Band	33.35
SCS	3

* FTE Communications Staff figures are from December 31 2021

3. The Scottish Government does not have frontline communications divisions located in different policy departments as would be found, for example, in the UK Government. As previously mentioned, the Scottish Government has a central communications function which is responsible for the core press office and marketing communications output from the government across all policy areas. Some policy directorates, however, will have individual policy communications teams generally responsible for stakeholder engagement and policy management functions.

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