Glasgow to return £44.1m in Covid funding back to Scottish Government

Glasgow is set to return £44.1m worth of Covid funding back to the Scottish Government after it was received by its health and social care partnership.

The Glasgow City Integration Joint board, which oversees the partnership, got £65.6m of Covid cash for this financial year and is expected to spend £21.1m.

A paper presented to last week’s Integration Joint Board meeting said “based on the current forecast, it is estimated that £44.1m will be required to be returned to Scottish Government.”

The meeting heard public health rules changed over the summer and there will not be the same amount of Covid spend this year compared to previous years.

A letter from the Scottish Government sent to the partnership said: “There have been a number of significant changes to public health policies in relation to Covid over the summer, resulting in the profile of Covid spend reducing significantly compared to when funding was provided to Integration Joint Boards for Covid purposes.

“In response to this, the Scottish Government will reclaim surplus Covid reserves to be redistributed across the sector to meet current Covid priorities.”

The budget monitoring paper said: “The original funding letter was clear that the funding had to be used to meet the additional costs of responding to the pandemic in the Integration Authority as well as NHS Board and if there are unfunded costs within the health system then it is reasonable for the Scottish Government to claw back these funds to allow them to be redistributed to these areas.”