Public Spending by country and region

Background
Data
Country and regional analysis guidance

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Background

Public expenditure is planned and controlled on a departmental basis, except where devolved responsibility lies with the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. In several areas expenditure is planned on a UK or GB basis rather than by country. For example, the Department of Work and Pensions is responsible for the operation of the social security benefit system throughout Great Britain, and the defence budget covers the whole of the UK.

Departmental expenditure allocation is not normally on a regional basis. For example, social security payments are based on individual entitlements. However we can analyse the countries and regions of the UK for the benefit of whose citizens and enterprises public expenditure has been made. Country and regional spending data are published annually in Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses.

The PESA 2008 chapters 9 and 10 analyses are set within the overall framework of Total Expenditure on Services (see appendix E of PESA 2008). The analyses take known outturn spending data across all government departments and the devolved administrations, and therefore across the whole UK, and split this spending data into spending that can be identified as benefiting individual regions and that which cannot, because it benefits the UK as a whole (such as defence spending). The spending that can be identified as benefiting regions is termed ‘identifiable expenditure’. The analyses in PESA present statistical estimates for the allocation of this identifiable expenditure between the UK countries and the English regions.

Data

Country and regional spending data are published annually in chapters 9 and 10 of Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses. An additional release in May 2008 of more detailed country and regional spending data was pre-announced in PESA 2008. The database containing all the underlying data used to compile tables 9.1 to 9.19 and 10.1 to 10.4 in chapters 9 and 10 of PESA 2008 is also available to download. Accompanying the databases, is a data quality statement that should be read in conjunction with using the databases.

*Please note that this file may take some time to download.

HM Treasury and ONS also issued the following joint memorandum for consultation, which implements the recommendation from the McLean report that they should jointly produce a memorandum on the rules for measuring regional expenditure under the alternative ‘in’ and ‘for’ methods, and publish it for consultation with users of National Statistics. The consultation is now closed. The memorandum discusses the use of these different methods, as well as the rules for measurement regional spending under each of them. It explains the advantages and limitations of each approach, and which approach has been used by the ONS and the Treasury in which context, and why. It also includes the actual guidance, based on this memorandum, which was issued by the Treasury to departments who supply data for the country and regional analyses that are published in PESA 2004.

Following the memorandum 'Measuring Government Expenditure by Region' HM Treasury and ONS issued a summary of responses to the consultation and next steps.

Country and regional analysis guidance

In November 2007 HM Treasury issued revised guidance to departments for the country and regional analysis (CRA) data collection exercise for PESA 2008 and the 2008 Departmental Reports.

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