Chamber and committees

Question reference: S6W-14722

Asked by: Miles Briggs, MSP for Lothian, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
Date lodged: 14 February 2023
Current status: Answered by Ivan McKee on 23 February 2023

Question

To ask the Scottish Government how many of the jobs that it has created for its staff in each of the last five years have been in rural and island communities.

Answer

Scottish Government Human Resources does not hold a central record of the creation or approval of new posts, this process is handled by individual business areas under the direction and approval of a Director. There is no single Directorate responsible for all rural and island based staff.

To provide information that is equivalent to the creation of posts, we have:

Identified SG offices in rural and island locations based on categorisation established by National Records of Scotland or by Local Authority.
Provided the headcount of directly employed staff at those locations in each of the last 5 years, with the year-on-year change indicating instances when new posts may have been created.

Our most recently published data are at 30 September 2022. 30 September has been used as the reference date each year for comparison purposes. These data cover staff in Scottish Government Core Directorates only.

Table showing headcount variation year-on-year from 30 September 2018 to 30 September 2022

	30-Sep-18	30-Sep-19		30-Sep-20		30-Sep-21		30-Sep-22		Grand total
	Snapshot Headcount	Snapshot Headcount	Variation on previous year	Snapshot Headcount	Variation on previous year	Snapshot Headcount	Variation on previous year	Snapshot Headcount	Variation on previous year	Variation 2018-2022
Rural	364	370	+6	375	+5	375	0	424	+49	+60
Islands	70	73	+3	79	+6	84	+5	90	+6	+20

The Scottish Government is committed to flexible hybrid working for our workforce, enabling staff to work from a range of settings.

See all of Miles Briggs's questions