Public Bodies Expenditure: Supplementary Report of Data Commission

What do the returns 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:

• Taking all opportunities to increase the efficiency with which they deliver their functions.
• Taking all opportunities to offer services in different ways.
• Considering reclassification/alignment/merger of bodies or function.
• Reducing service only where these options are exhausted.

Both public bodies, and the Scottish Government itself, have taken action for some time to deliver savings and make the most of their resources. 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 £23 billion 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 how Scotland’s public bodies can and do address the challenge. As well as information about the scale of total expenditure attributable to corporate functions across these bodies, the report offers data about how much funding bodies pass through to other organisations and citizens, and award in grant payments. It also highlights key messages from responses public bodies provided about the approaches they are pursuing on delivering savings, revenue generation and workforce management.

See the supporting microdata for more information on the following data, including caveats.