Here’s a tale of central government apparently insulating itself from risks it expects other parts of the public services to take, without making that clear, or meeting any scrutiny along the way.
In August 2012, the Scottish Government announced with considerable hype that it was “simplifying” student support from 2013-14. But by 2014-15, the actual cost of running the Student Awards Agency Scotland (SAAS) had risen by nearly two-thirds. The number of students receiving support rose by just 3% over the same period.
Below are what the annual budget figures have set out for SAAS operating costs, plus what has been more quietly done by way of in-year top-ups, using spring and autumn budget revisions (all figures in £m). Very striking here is how for 2013-14 and 2014-15 the spring budget revisions, which should reflect the expected final outturn, are much higher than the figures initially put to the Parliament for each of those years.
These substantial budget revisions are subsequently ignored, with the unrevised figure presented as the baseline for future budgets. So the 2015-16 baseline in the most recent draft budget is given as £10.3m, even though the final figure for 2014-15 was £15.1m, the number the Parliament eventually voted for last spring. Technically, the budget is proposing a one-third cut from the year just past but (a) that isn’t how it looks and (b) on past form, neither is that likely to be the real plan. But it might be. Or maybe a smaller cut. We can’t tell.
2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | ||
Annual budget | Draft | 8.71 | 10.32 | 10.33 | 10.34 | |
Final | 8.4 | 8.7 | 10.3 | 10.3 | ? | |
Autumn/Spring (in-year) revisions | 10.3/11.7 | 10.7/15.1 | 11.7/? | ?/? |
Here’s the actual spending the SAAS annual accounts record (£m).
2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | |
Staff | 4.804 | 6.824 | 8.418 |
Other administrative costs | 2.863 | 3.675 | 4.949 |
Amortisation and depreciation | 0.976 | 1.004 | 1.007 |
Total | 8.616 | 11.503 | 14.374 |
Staff costs breakdown: | |||
Salaries and wages | 3.888 | 4.414 | 5.289 |
Social security costs | 0.247 | 0.281 | 0.34 |
Other pensions costs | 0.629 | 0.724 | 0.847 |
Agency staff | 0.22 | 1.425 | 1.942 |
The most recent SAAS accounts explain what is behind the rise (p10):
Having focused on resourcing our front line customer service during 2013‑2014, this focus on capacity building has continued into 2014‑2015 but with a greater emphasis on strengthening our back office functions and reviewing the overall shape and structure of the Agency. This has required us to run two significant recruitment campaigns for administrative and entry level management staff and we’ve strengthened the senior leadership capability within the Agency with the recruitment of three new executive posts at SG C2 grade. In doing so, we have now created four Director posts designed to better reflect, in particular to our external stakeholders, the scope and responsibility of these roles.
Elsewhere, the accounts attribute some of the increase in non-staff costs in 2014-15 to one-off relocation costs.
I want to stress at this point that this extra spending sounds potentially well-justified. SAAS has had troubles in the past: delayed payments in 2012 led to high-profile political fuss and a review. That review found that
SAAS has insufficient resource in core functions
and that
Resource was undoubtedly a serious constraint. The Review heard that SAAS had requested additional resource in 2010 and battled hard to avoid a proposed operating budget cut of 10%-15% in the same year. We do not doubt that the context of public sector financial pressure suppressed active consideration of the need for a major “step change” investment in SAAS capacity and capability to match emerging expectations. At the same time, we struggled to find evidence that the shortfall between resource demand and resource supply had been articulated clearly and escalated sufficiently.
and that
Permanent staffing should be augmented through exploring outsourcing (Processing, Contact Centre and IT)
That was then, this is now
Things have been much smoother since, a relocation happened last year without any evident problems and the agency is generally (it’s my impression) well-regarded by the people who deal with it.
But these figures draw out two important points. First, achieving good public services costs money behind the scenes. At a time of squeezed public spending, back-office functions are often seen as an easy source of savings – until something goes wrong. The management of police call handling feels like an obvious recent case in point.
Second, the rising cost of administering the student support system has received no serious attention in the last couple of budgets. Nor has the Parliament complained about the annual budget figures being presented to it by the Scottish Government failing to reflect in-year revisions or plans presented to it now being persistently well adrift from what is actually being spent. None of this is set out clearly anywhere or the implications discussed.
These numbers tell an important story about the cost of providing decent public services and the selectivity with which that is recognised, while illustrating how poor the bread and butter scrutiny of government is in Scotland and how the government contributes to that situation.
There was a chance here for government and parliament to promote a debate about how running public services to the standards that users expect can sometimes mean investing in the sort of jobs routinely dismissed as bureaucracy. Instead, with local tax remaining frozen and income tax powers parked, local government and other bodies seem assumed able to pare to the minimum their administrative and support functions, while protecting their more politically interesting “front-line staff”. Central government is taking no such risks with public services on which Ministers have recently felt the immediate heat, it turns out.
This is an abridged, edited version of an original blog on the author’s site
Leave a Reply