Relocation of Scottish Executive Departments, agencies and NDPBs – podcast transcript

Leon: Hello, I’m Leon Thomson and I’m joined by Mark MacPherson, audit manager at Audit Scotland to talk about the report on relocation. So Mark, why have you carried out this study?
Mark: Well the Executive’s policy for the location and relocation of public sector organisations in Scotland was announced in 1999. Since that announcement the location of 38 organisations involving some 4,681 posts have been, or are being reviewed.  28 of those bodies have been relocated or will be established outside of Edinburgh. The relocation of organisations and staff may result in costs being incurred or benefits accruing. The Auditor General considered that after 7 years the time was right to look at the implementation and impact of relocation.

Leon: I see, so what are the main findings from the study?
Mark: There are a number of main findings.  First of all posts have been dispersed.  Just under 3,000 posts have been moved or established outside of Edinburgh since the policy was introduced.  While individual organisations and units have been dispersed throughout Scotland around 60 percent of the posts have been located in Glasgow.  The Executive has not set specific targets for relocation and it has not identified areas of the country likely to benefit from the policy. There is some limited evidence of efficiency gains from the policy such as lower staff turnover and reductions in sick leave in specific relocations but wider benefits have not yet been measured.  On costs, our estimates indicate that the additional cost per job for relocation ranges between a saving of £33,000 per job and a cost of £45,000 per job.  Finally, in some cases newer revised criteria to identify potential sites for relocation were introduced late in the process.

Leon: How does Audit Scotland think the Executive should be measuring the impact of the policy?
Mark: The impact should be measured in terms of both the cost and benefits arising from relocation. When we began our work there had been little systematic assessment of costs arising from relocation. We worked with individual organisations and with Scottish Executive economists to develop a model and to derive estimates of relocation costs and hope that the Scottish Executive will be able to draw on this work to assist with evaluation. On measuring the wider benefits such as economic development or social inclusion we found only one case where the wider benefits had been assessed. We have recommended that the Executive should do more to evaluate the wider benefits and that it should engage key stakeholders such as local authorities and local enterprise companies to help it do so.  

Leon: And finally, what do you hope will be the outcome from this report?
Mark: We recognise that the Executive has strengthened support for any organisation asked to consider its relocation and that this should lead to improvements in the way that relocation is administered.  In our report we have identified a number of other issues that the Executive should consider and we hope that threes recommendations will improve the consistency of reviews, the transparency around decision-making and knowledge about the impact of relocation.

Leon: Mark, thank-you very much.