Councils spent £400m on social care overtime and agency staff since 2020

Councils in Scotland have spent more than £400 million in the past five years on social care overtime and agency staff, figures show.

Statistics released to the Scottish Conservatives under freedom of information legislation show a £400.1 million spend between 2020 and 2025, with the relatively even split of £200.4 million in agency spend and £199.7 million in overtime.

During that time, the total annual spend on both across the country rose from £60.2 million to £85.7 million.

Scottish Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane said the Scottish Government should have used the £30 million spent on preparing the launch of the dropped national care service to hire more care staff to cut the need for workers to exceed their hours, or to pay outside agencies.

Glasgow City Council spent the most, at £99.7 million.

“The SNP are presiding over a social care crisis in Scotland,” Dr Gulhane said.

“These shocking, whopping figures expose an exhausted workforce, with chronic staff shortages forcing carers into endless overtime.

“Councils are grappling with brutal SNP budget cuts, and the Government’s failure to address staff shortages in the care sector has left them robbing Peter to pay Paul, to the tune of £400 million.

“The SNP shamefully squandered £30 million on their doomed national care service, money that could have been used to hire extra care workers and take the pressure off overworked staff.

“SNP ministers must urgently cut waste in the public sector and redirect savings to support our struggling frontline services.”

Glasgow City Council has been contacted for comment.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We are working tirelessly to improve the outcomes of people who either need or receive social care to fulfil our commitment to deliver the sustainable change that people urgently need.

“The 2025-26 budget includes over £15 billion for the local government settlement and almost £2.2 billion for social care and integration – exceeding our commitment to increase funding by 25% by almost £350 million.

“At £21.7 billion, the overall financial envelope for health and social care also reached record levels.

“We are also implementing the Care Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 that was unanimously passed by Parliament in June.

“This is a significant step that will strengthen the rights of people living in care homes, support unpaid carers and social workers, while improving experiences for the many people who access social care across Scotland.

“The money spent on the national care service programme from August 2021 to date is only 0.45% of the total £8.7 billion allocated across the same period through Scottish Government budget for social care and integration.

“Many of the external pressures facing the sector are a result of UK Government decisions, including increasingly restrictive and hostile migration policies and increases to national insurance contributions – which are set to cost the social care sector £84 million.”

A Glasgow City Council spokesperson said: “Not all councils in Scotland provide care services in the same way. In Glasgow, we run the largest in-house care at home and residential services in the country.

“We’re also the biggest local authority so it is inevitable that our staffing and overtime costs will be higher than others. We also need to use agency staff when our regular staff are off or when we have vacancies, to make sure we can still provide the right level of care to service users.”