Employability support funding in Scotland: FOI Release

Information requested

Information related to the allocation and ‘carry forward’ (i.e. underspend) of Scottish government funds for employability services.

1. The allocations to the 32 local authorities for the financial years 2020-1 under:
2. No One Left Behind (NOLB),
3. Parental Employability Support Fund (PESF), and
4. Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE)
5. For the financial years 2020-1 to present, how much of each of these budgets have been carried forward (i.e. underspent) in total across all local authorities in Scotland.
6. The figure for each local authority in each programme for each relevant year

Response

1. and c) Please see the attachment, FOI Employability Funding 2020-2025 - Ref 202400423267 for grant allocations from 2020/21 to 2024/25 broken down by Local Authority. The Partnership Action for Continuing Employment budget was only provided to local authorities as a Covid-19 measure in 2020/21. For 2023/24 and 2024/25, an element of funding for Employability Staffing was issued through the General Revenue Grant. For 2023/24 allocations, please see Annex G of Local government finance circular 8/2023: settlement for 2024 to 2025. 2024/25 allocations have been included in the attachment.
2. You have requested the amount carried forward by Local Authorities across these budgets. Local authorities are not usually permitted to carry forward any unspent employability allocations. However, due to the impact of COVID-19 they were allowed to carry over unspent employability funding from 2020/21 into 2021/22, and unspent employability funding from 2021/22 into 2022/23.
   This resulted in:
   1. £9.562m of 2020/21 funding being carried forward into 2021/22, with Local Authorities repaying £3.206m that was unused at end of 2021/22; and
   2. £9.284m of 2021/22 funding being carried forward into 2022/23, which was fully utilised.

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FOI 202400423267 - Information Released - Annex

File type

Excel document

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160.5 kB