Scottish Government

BACKGROUND NOTES

1. DATA SOURCES

1.1 The Scottish Government's Provisional Outturn and Budget Estimates ( POBE) has been collected with the help of the 32 unitary Local Authorities and Police and Fire Boards. The continued co-operation of these bodies in completing these returns is gratefully acknowledged.

1.2 The POBE form and Additional Information Sheets are sent to all Local Authorities annually to complete a breakdown by service and sub-service of their Provisional Outturn expenditure for the current year and their Budget Estimates for the forthcoming year. All amounts returned are Net Revenue Expenditure.

1.3 The Provisional Outturn 2008-09 expenditure are provisional figures, the Final Outturn (pre-Audit) 2008-09 Net Revenue Expenditure figures will be published in the Scottish Local Government Financial Statistics ( SLGFS) next year: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance/PubScottishLGFStats.

1.4 Detailed statistics on Budget Estimates, using the POBE data, can be found in the 'Rating Review Estimates' series which are published annually by CIPFA in September.

2. DATA DEFINITIONS

2.1 All data are Net Revenue Expenditure figures.

2.2 Net Revenue Expenditure is the amount spent by local authorities on a service after applying any specific income to the gross expenditure for that service. The net revenue expenditure is therefore influenced by the value of any income attributable to that service. For example a local authority will provide planning and building control services for which they will charge fees for that service. The net revenue expenditure will be the residual cost of providing those services after deducting any income charged.

2.3 Revenue expenditure is largely made up of employee and operating costs. Employee costs include salaries, wages, national insurance, superannuation contributions, cash allowances to employees, redundancy and severance payments and other employee costs. Operating costs include property costs, supplies and services, transport and plant costs, payments to agencies and other bodies, and direct administration costs.

2.4 Net Revenue expenditure is financed by Scottish Government grant, Non-Domestic Rates income, Council Tax income and local authority Reserves.

2.5 When comparing the Provisional Outturn and the Budget Estimates with each other, or with any previously published data on outturn or budgets, please be aware of the following:-

• Across years, accounting procedures adopted by councils may improve as new Statements of Recommended Practice ( SORP) and Financial Reporting Standards ( FRS) are developed by official accounting bodies, which can lead to discontinuity in the data collected between financial years.
• Budget estimates are only an indication of spend, and when comparing budget estimates, year to year changes for individual councils and/or individual services can be misleading in terms of being an indication of the eventual annual change in spend.
• Net revenue expenditure can be affected by large one-off payments in any year e.g. Equal Pay back pay settlement expenditure. An example of this is the upfront costs involved with the M74 expansion recorded during 2008-09 which is likely to explain some of the decrease in net revenue expenditure from the Provisional Outturn 2008-09 to the Budget Estimate 2009-10 in 'Roads and Transport'.

3. THIS IS AN OFFICIAL STATISTICS PUBLICATION

3.1 Official statistics are produced by independent professional statistical staff - more information on the standards of Official Statistics in Scotland can be accessed at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/About.

4. ENQUIRIES

4.1 Public enquiries (non-media) about the information contained in this Statistics Publication Notice should be addressed to:

Statistical Support for Local Government Branch

Telephone 0131 244 7030 or
e-mail lgfstats@scotland.gsi.gov.uk.

4.2 Media enquiries about the information in this Statistics Publication Notice should be addressed to Stewart Cooper on 0131 244 2175.

Internet: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/stats/bulletins/00745

Local Government Finance Statistics website: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Local-Government-Finance