Household Support Fund allocation: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request - 202400423931

Details on how the Scottish Government dished out their share of the UK Government's Household Support Fund.

Response

Further to my letter of 10 September, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for

“Can you please detail how the Scottish Government dished out their share of the UK government's Household Support Fund.”

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications.

You provided further detail on your FOI request in your email dated 21 August:

“Yes, I understand the Barnett consequential, and I also understand the Scottish Government are not required to follow guidelines set by the UK government on spending, that money was earmarked for the most vulnerable in the current cost of living crisis. However, that was not my question.

My question was.. How was this money allocated, and spent?

The staff at The Scottish Welfare Fund hadn't heard of Rishi Sunak's Household Support Fund, whenever I asked them, and their management assured me that they never seen any of that cash...”

As the original response set out, Barnett consequentials do not have to be spent in areas replicating the UK Government policy decision. In practice, this means that consequential funding received by the Scottish Government is added to the total Scottish Government funding pot.

Decisions on where to allocate total available funding are taken by Ministers, regardless of the funding source, as part of the annual budget process with updates set out in the Autumn and Summer budget revisions, with the provisional outturn and final outturn setting out final spend each year.

As a result of funding being pooled together, in the majority of cases, it is not possible to follow individual funding streams to spend areas. This means spend areas will, with the exception of the Health portfolio where Ministers have made a political commitment to pass on all Health Barnett consequentials to the Health portfolio, only receive an allocated budget with no information on Scottish Government funding sources.

Therefore, I conclude that the original response is appropriate, but I have provided further context to help interpret the information provided.

I would like to provide a modification to the original response as information relating to financial year 2021-22 was omitted in error. Please accept my apologies for this omission. As noted above, in the majority of cases, consequential funding is not specifically allocated. However, in 2021-22 it was specifically applied as set out below:

In 2021-22 the Scottish Government received £40.674 million of consequentials relating to the Household Support Fund. This was confirmed in the UK Government’s Autumn Statement and applied to the Scottish Budget in-year as part of the Spring Budget Revision.

Scottish Ministers decided to utilise this to fund a range of support through our Winter Support Fund which comprised:

• £10m Fuel Insecurity Fund
• £25m Flexible support fund distributed to local authorities that included cash payments to households
• £6m for support through a range of third sector partners that included cash payments to households

Your email dated 21 August also mentioned that staff at the Scottish Welfare Fund had not heard of Rishi Sunak's Household Support Fund. As I’ve set out above, this is because all funding is pooled together and then allocated to spending areas via the Scottish Government budget bill processes. Spend areas will not be aware if any Barnett consequentials have been used in providing their budget. 

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