Devolved government finances

Last month the government finally announced how its replacement for EU regional development funding – the Shared Prosperity Fund – will be allocated across the country.

It is disappointing that the UK government has ‘taken back control’ only to stick to an arbitrary, poorly designed, out-of-date funding allocation mechanism.

The allocation of public spending is one the most direct levers for ‘levelling up’ health, wealth and well-being. But is policy aligned with the government’s stated aims?

An initial analysis of the 2022-23 Local Government Finance Settlement finds slightly more funding than expected, and bigger increases for poorer areas.

While there is still much uncertainty, we now project Scotland’s budget deficit in 2020–21 to have spiked at between 22% and 25% of national income, up from 8.6% of national income in 2019–20, although less than our previous projection. It is also still higher than a forecast deficit of 16% of national income for the UK as a whole for the same year.

For the first time, and co-funded by the Scottish Policy Foundation, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a range of Scottish Election Briefing Notes on tax, benefits and public spending, and the parties plans for the coming parliamentary term. We presented the main findings of our analysis ahead of the election at a live webinar, in partnership with the University of Glasgow.

The SNP’s manifesto offers big gains to a number of targeted groups in Scotland - but would involve difficult trade-offs in a tight budgetary environment.

Are there any common themes in how the current Scottish Government has used these powers? Who are the winners and losers from the reforms it has under

How is Scotland's higher spending allocated across different services? How have these allocations changed over time? And how do a range of headline in

The COVID-19 crisis has both created billions of pounds of new costs for and demands on councils’ budgets and has hit many of their sources of income. We find that across the sector as a whole, the government has largely addressed forecast pressures in 2020-21. However, financial pressures have been, and will continue to be, uneven across councils. As a result, underlying the aggregate picture, many councils still face at least some shortfall this year – particularly among shire districts.