Local Authority Provisional Outturn (2016-17) And Budget Estimates (2017-18)

27th June 2017

An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland.

Scotland's Chief Statistician today published 2016-17 Provisional Outturn and 2017-18 Budget Estimates Statistics. The publication provides net revenue expenditure figures for all the main services carried out by Scotland's local authorities.

2016-17 - Provisional Outturn

Scotland’s local authorities’ provisional outturn total net revenue expenditure is £11.875 billion. This is a decrease of £0.119 billion (-1.0%) compared with 2015-16.

£4.879 billion of the expenditure in 2016-17 is on Education, an increase of £0.086 billion (1.8%) on 2015-16. £3.139 billion is on Social Work, a decrease of £0.037 billion (-1.2%). These are Net Revenue Expenditure figures and, therefore, the social work figure does not include the £250 million made available from the Health budget via Integration Joint Boards. These two services account for over two thirds of expenditure, with Education accounting for 41.1% of total expenditure and social work accounting for 26.4%.

Net revenue expenditure is funded from Scottish Government grants, local taxes and reserves. Local Authorities received £6.837 billion (58.5% of funding) from Scottish Government Grants, received £2.768 billion (23.7%) from non-domestic rates and raised £2.075 billion (17.8% of funding) from council tax. This funding totalled £11.680 billion, with £0.195 billion being funded from local authority reserves.

At 1st April 2016, local authorities held General Fund reserves of £1.143 billion, which fell by 14.3% to £0.980 billion at the 31st March 2017. Of the 32 authorities, 27 authorities drew on reserves to fund expenditure in 16-17, 4 increased their reserves and 1 did not draw on or contribute to reserves.

2017-18 - Budget Estimates

For 2017-18 Scotland’s local authorities have set a net revenue expenditure budget of £11.902 billion for spending on all services. This is £0.178 billion more (1.5%) than the budget set for 2016-17.

£4.970 billion of the 2017-18 budget is for Education, an increase of £0.144 billion (3.0%) on 2016-17. £3.174 billion is on Social Work, an increase of £0.088 billion (2.8%). These are Net Revenue Expenditure figures and, therefore, do not include the £107 million made available from the Health budget via Integration Joint Boards. These two services account for over two thirds of the budget, with Education accounting for 41.8% of the total budget and social work accounting for 26.7%.

Local Authorities have budgeted to receive £6.881 billion (58.4%) from Scottish Government grants, receive £2.652 billion (22.5%) from non-domestic rates and raise £2.257 billion (19.1% of total funding) from council tax. This funding totals £11.790 billion, with £0.112 billion being funded from local authority reserves

At 1st April 2017, local authorities estimated that they held General Fund reserves of £0.980 billion, 24 authorities have set budgets that call on reserves, 3 have set budgets that neither call on, nor increase reserves, and 5 have set budgets that increase reserves. Overall General Fund reserves are expected to fall by 6.8% to £0.914 billion by the 31st March 2018.

The Scottish Government’s Provisional Outturn and Budget Estimates (POBE) have been collected with the help of the 32 unitary local authorities. The continued co-operation of these bodies in completing these returns is gratefully acknowledged.

The provisional outturn 2016-17 expenditure are unaudited and subject to revision. The final, audited outturn 2016-17 figures will be published in the Scottish Local Government Financial Statistics (SLGFS) 2016-17, scheduled for publication in February 2018.

All data are net revenue expenditure figures. Gross revenue expenditure is the total expenditure on local authority services within a financial year and net revenue expenditure is the gross revenue expenditure less any specific income for individual services. Net revenue expenditure is therefore expenditure to be financed from General Revenue Funding (which comprises General Revenue Grant and Ring-Fenced Revenue Grants), Non-Domestic Rates income, Council Tax income and local authority reserves.

Any income received from Integration Joint Boards will be treated as service income. As such, the figures for Social Work do not take into account additional support of £250 million in 2016-17 and £107 million in 2017-18 which the Scottish Government has made available from the Health budget to authorities via Integration Joint Boards.

The full statistical publication is available at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/POBEStats

This publication contains a breakdown of provisional outturn and budget estimates by local authority and service: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/POBEStats

Official statistics are produced by professionally independent statistical staff – more information on the standards of official statistics in Scotland can be accessed at: http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/About