BBIA Managing Director David Newman gives a brief summary of the 2015 Spending Review.

George Osborne’s Spending Review on 25 November came and went, and I get the feeling everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. At least we now know what the government’s cuts through to 2020 are going to be and now we can move on and try to deal with them.

Quite how they will work out in terms of individual programmes, departments, loss of expertise and personnel, has yet to be understood. Certainly we will lose some continuity.

A review of government spending plans until 2020 can be seen by clicking here.

  • The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) faces some cuts, with spending expected to rise to £1.7bn in 2016/17 and reduce to £1.4bn by 2019/20.
  • The Department for Business, Innovation & Science (BIS) faces a reduction in spending from £12.9bn in this year to £11.5bn in 2019/20 – a 10 per cent reduction.
  • The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) budget remains unchanged, surprising many of us who expected severe cuts.
  • Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all receive a slight increase in funding from central government. Local government will be given the right to levy additional taxes for social spending and for fighting crime.