UK Government confirms £430 million funding for Devolved Administrations to tackle Covid

16 Dec 2021 02:38 PM

£430 million of additional funding from the UK Reserve will be made available to the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to progress their vaccine rollout and wider Covid-19 response.

While the devolved administrations are well-funded to continue their response to Covid-19, and have their own reserves and contingency funds, any additional in-year Barnett funding will not be confirmed until early 2022 through the Supplementary Estimates process. HM Treasury has therefore announced that additional funding will be made available to the devolved administrations to provide greater certainty and allow them to plan as they tackle Covid-19 during the crucial weeks ahead.

The amounts being provided to each government are:

These amounts will be kept under review in the coming weeks.

These are confirmed additional amounts on top of the funding set out at the Autumn Budget 2021, relating to health pressures and the Covid-19 Additional Relief Funding. It means that the devolved administrations have the certainty they requested to spend additional funding now rather than waiting for Supplementary Estimates in the new year.

The UK Government has already provided the devolved administrations with an extra £12.6 billion through the Barnett formula this year – this includes £1.3 billion confirmed at the recent Autumn Budget, which took their total funding this year to £77.6 billion.

This is on top of UK Government spending on vaccines and tests for the whole of the UK and UK-wide support for businesses and jobs.

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