Scottish Ministers have made the Budget (Scotland) Act 2025 Amendment Regulations 2025 (SSI 2025/382), updating authorised spending and purposes for the 2025/26 financial year. The Regulations were made on 2 December 2025 and come into force on 3 December 2025, following approval by resolution of the Scottish Parliament under section 7(2) of the Budget (Scotland) Act 2025.
Under section 4 of the Act, the overall cash authorisations are revised. The Scottish Administration is set at £60,482,300,149. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is set at £136,210,926. Audit Scotland is set at £14,067,000. These figures provide the legal cash limits against which payments may be issued during 2025/26.
Schedule 1 is restructured to clarify responsibilities. A new Housing portfolio purpose is added as purpose 8A. This purpose covers operational and administrative costs; building standards; housing subsidies and guarantees; repayment of debt and related costs; housing-related grants and contributions; support for the Scottish Fuel Poverty Advisory Panel; homelessness activities; research and publicity; grants to local authorities and registered social landlords; loans to individuals; cladding remediation and the cladding assurance register; and funding for domestic energy efficiency, insulation and refurbishment projects. Corresponding lines are omitted from the existing purpose 3 text to avoid duplication.
Purpose 9 is retitled from “Net Zero” to “Climate Action”. References to funding for domestic energy efficiency, insulation and refurbishment projects are removed from purpose 9, with those activities now expressly located within the new Housing purpose 8A. This aligns the appropriation with delivery routes in housing, building standards and cladding remediation programmes, without creating new policy conditions.
Resources other than accruing resources for Schedule 1 are amended. For purposes 1 to 8 the revised amounts are: purpose 1 £21,758,803,682; purpose 2 £15,075,291,654; purpose 3 £7,541,486,014; purpose 4 £3,966,428,681; purpose 5 £4,051,043,500; purpose 6 £3,930,333,000; purpose 7 £1,387,156,961; purpose 8 £1,131,964,501. The new purpose 8A is set at £1,007,585,986.
For the remaining purposes, the revised amounts are: purpose 9 £568,939,850; purpose 10 £323,857,000; purpose 11 £250,828,000; purpose 12 £38,511,936; purpose 14 £5,581,000; purpose 15 £207,680,800; purpose 16 £2,788,000; purpose 18 £23,316,000; purpose 19 £3,058,184,000; purpose 20 £5,607,000; purpose 21 £3,172,000; and purpose 22 £4,425,000. The total for resources other than accruing resources in Schedule 1 is now £64,358,698,565.
Accruing resources are also adjusted. The new Housing purpose 8A is authorised to use £90,000,000 of accruing resources. The total accruing resources for Schedule 1 are revised to £9,547,500,000. Public bodies should reflect these ceilings in income-applied expenditure plans and ensure that receipts are attributed to the correct purpose line.
Schedule 2 (Direct-Funded Bodies) is amended to revise the amount of resources other than accruing resources for the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body to £153,110,926. This is separate from the cash authorisation in section 4 and should be applied in resource budgeting and reporting for the SPCB.
The practical effect for 2025/26 is clearer appropriation for domestic energy efficiency and related housing activity. Local authorities, registered social landlords and delivery partners should update grant documentation, programme memoranda and internal ledgers to cite “purpose 8A (Housing)” where relevant, especially for insulation, refurbishment and cladding remediation projects funded from 3 December 2025.
Finance directors should adjust budget monitoring schedules to the revised authorisations. Commitments entered on or after 3 December 2025 may be charged to the updated purposes and totals. Organisations should distinguish between resource authorisations and cash authorisations, ensuring that cashflow forecasts reflect the section 4 limits while resource outturns align with the Schedule 1 totals.
The Regulations are made under section 7(1) of the Budget (Scotland) Act 2025 (2025 asp 7). The instrument carries the same legal status as the original Schedule once in force. It was signed at St Andrew’s House, Edinburgh, by Ivan McKee on 2 December 2025, providing an audit trail for the in-year revision.
In spending terms, purposes 1 and 2 remain the largest resource lines at £21.76bn and £15.08bn respectively, while the creation of purpose 8A allocates £1.01bn to Housing for the expanded remit. Climate Action (purpose 9) stands at £568.94m on a resources-other-than-accruing basis after the energy efficiency transfer. Delivery teams should align procurement pipelines and grant offer letters to these appropriations for the remainder of the 2025/26 year.