Breakdown of staff operating costs: FOI release

Information requested

A detailed breakdown of the "Staff Operating Costs” found in the Scottish Government Consolidating Account for the years 2018/19 to 2021/22. In particular what the costs associated with “directly employed staff”, “Seconded staff costs” and "other staff costs” are, as well as any staff costs related to VAT.

Response

Information about staff operating costs can be found in the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts. The consolidated accounts can be found at the following link: Financial reports and accounts - Government finance - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). The most recently available accounts cover the financial year 2020/21. The consolidated accounts covering the period 2021-2022 are anticipated to be published in late 2022. We have therefore provided information for the financial years 2018/19, 2019/20, and 2020/21, which are the years for which consolidated accounts information in relation to your request is available.

The Staff operating costs, as per the Scottish Government Consolidated Accounts for the years 2018/19 to 2021/22, as disclosed in the Operating Costs Note within the 2019-20 and 2020-21 consolidated accounts, were:

• 2018-19: £365 million
• 2019-20: £430 million
• 2020-21: £512 million

This can be broken down, as follow:

	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21
	£'000	£'000	£'000
Salaries & Wages	283,014	315,198	376,395
National Insurance	27,177	30,589	35,725
Pension costs	52,915	76,692	87,658
Other staff related costs	6,830	9,917	7,415
Seconded staff costs	11,716	17,019	20,842
Internal recharged staff costs	-8,652	-9,527	-8,526
Outward seconded staff costs	-7,523	-9,349	-7,970
	365,477	430,539	511,539

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.