Publication - FOI/EIR release

Scottish Government employee dismissal statistics: FOI release

Published: 16 October 2024
Directorate: People Directorate
Topic: Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/202400430884
Date received: 9 September 2024
Date responded: 7 October 2024

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Information requested

In each of the past five years how many Scottish Government employees have been dismissed from employment?

Of those dismissed, please provide a breakdown for each year showing how many were dismissed for gross misconduct.

Of those dismissed, please provide a breakdown for each year showing how many were subsequently re-employed by the Scottish Government.

Response

You have asked for data for the past five years. As the information requested is extracted from our payroll system, the data supplied in this response is for the period 1st September 2019 to 31 August 2024.

You have asked how many Scottish Government employees have been dismissed from employment in each of the past five years. During the period 1st September 2019 to 31 August 2024, 43 employees were dismissed from employment.

You also asked for a breakdown for each year to show how many Scottish Government employees were dismissed for gross misconduct. Under the Scottish Governments Discipline Policy misconduct can be a result of various behaviours and actions. Please see Annex A for examples of misconduct noted in our Discipline policy.

It should also be noted that the gravity of the misconduct will determine whether it is dealt with as minor, serious or gross misconduct.

During the period 1st September 2019 to 31 August 2024, 11 people, were dismissed for conduct reasons. Of those 11 cases, 4 were in relation to Gross Misconduct. The remaining 7 related to a failure to meet a satisfactory level of conduct during the probationary period.

Lastly, you requested a breakdown for those dismissed to show each year how many were subsequently re-employed by the Scottish Government. I can confirm none of the employees dismissed were re-employed by the Scottish Government in the period 1st September 2019 to 31 August 2024.

Annex B provides a breakdown of this information by year.

Please note that the information provided above refers to staff within the core Director-General areas of the Scottish Government (see Annex C attached). Requests for information about other bodies/agencies should be sent directly to them.

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.