Public bodies expenditure: aggregated data for 2022-23

What does the data tell us?

Public sector resources in Scotland continue to be constrained. To protect the sustainability and effectiveness of public services, Scottish Government portfolios and public bodies have been asked to follow a “cascade approach” to savings which Cabinet agreed in late 2023. This involves following a cascade of options in delivering savings:

1. Taking all opportunities to increase the efficiency with which they deliver their functions.

2. Taking all opportunities to offer services in different ways.

3. Considering reclassification/alignment/merger of bodies or function.

4. Reducing service only where these options are exhausted.

To inform the Scottish Government’s Public Service Reform (PSR) programme, on 15 July the Minister for Public Finance wrote to Chairs and Chief Executives of public bodies regarding their expenditure and efficiency. The letter included a template seeking information on expenditure on various corporate functions as well as short narrative statements on how they are delivering savings and their approach to workforce planning.

The returns show that a large amount of money is directed to these functions and therefore it is sensible to identify whether we can find further efficiencies. Total public body expenditure on running these functions was nearly £1.3 billion in 2022-23.

Whilst this is very significant sum of money, it is important to bear in mind that corporate functions provide vital foundations for effective and sustainable public services. Total resource expenditure by public bodies was over £23bn to deliver a huge range of services, including in Health, Education, Police & Fire; and the skill and commitment in delivering corporate functions is vital to delivering these front line services safely and efficiently.

However, given the overall scale of resource attributable to corporate functions, it is important that we pursue whatever further opportunities exist to bear down on these costs, wherever this can support more sustainable services and improved outcomes. To be clear, this is about taking any opportunities to be more efficient, and not to reduce or water down the vital services delivered by public bodies.

This matters for public bodies, individually and collectively. This report offers a valuable fresh insight into the scale of total expenditure attributable to corporate functions across Scotland’s public bodies.

Whilst this report is focused on public bodies data, it is important to set out the Scottish Government position. The total operating costs of the Scottish Government in 2023-24 were £803m^[1]. This figure is not directly comparable with the data in this report as it covers the entire staffing and other running costs for all Scottish Government activity, including its policy and delivery functions.

£179m of that total operating cost figure is the corporate running costs budget for the Scottish Government in 2023-24^[2]. This figure is also not directly comparable with the data in this report as it includes the cost of shared services provided by Scottish Government to other public bodies, and a number of other central functions (for example, legal services and ministerial private offices). It is also collated and aggregated in a different way and relates to a different time period.