Information relating to staff pay ranges and expenditure: FOI release

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002

FOI Reference: FOI/202200326780
Date received: 25 October 2022
Date responded: 22 November 2022

Request

I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from Social Security Scotland. Please may you provide me with:

• A copy of Social Security Scotland staff payscales
• A breakdown of the number of Social Security Staff employed within each payscale, and which departments these staff operate within
• The total costs of staff salaries, broken down by department

Response

Social Security Scotland staff are civil servants employed by the Scottish Government and pay rates and bands are set by the Scottish Government for grades A to C. For Senior Civil Service posts, rates of pay are also set by the Scottish Government within the bands set by the UK Cabinet Office, which are available to view at the below link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/senior-civil-service-pay-award-202223-practitioner-guidance/senior-civil-service-pay-award-202223-practitioner-guidance

Information on the remuneration of Senior Civil Servants employed by Social Security Scotland is published within our Annual Report, which is available here:

https://www.socialsecurity.gov.scot/reporting/publications/annual-report-2021-2022

The information is located on page 63.

For this response we have interpreted departments to mean divisions.

The Annual Report linked above includes our latest staffing costs for the financial year 2021-22, including the total cost of staff salaries. We have used this information to provide the response to this request. For consistency we have provided the number of staff in each pay range and division at the end of the financial year 2021-22.

With reference to pay ranges we have provided two tables with values from April 2021 and April 2022. The values in the table from April 2021 are the values that correspond to the other data provided in this response for the financial year 2021-22.

All information is provided in the attached file Appendix A.

About FOI

Social Security Scotland is committed to publishing responses to requests. The Scottish Government also publishes responses to requests. You can view the responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.