NIO announces 2018-19 Budget

In a written statement to the House of Commons, the Secretary of State laid the local budget for 2018-19. The budget includes:

• £410m arising from the ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement between the Conservatives and the DUP has been allocated. This includes:
  • £80m for immediate health and education pressures
  • £30m to support programmes to address issues of mental health and deprivation
  • £100m for HSC transformation as recommended in the Bengoa Report
• A £4m fund allocated to wider Civil Service transformation
• £17.1m to Delivering Social Change projects
• £6.6m in EU match funding
• £12m of Shared Future funding
• £19m on capital spend for shared education and housing
• £2.6m for SBRI and collective procurement
• An increase in the domestic regional rate of 4.5%; a rise in the non-domestic regional rate of 1.5%
• Unusually, £100m of capital revenue will be switched across to resource spending

Departmental allocations at a glance:

• Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs – £194.1m (+2.1%)
• Department for Communities – £900.1m (-1.6%)
• Department for the Economy – £763.3 (0.0%)
• Department of Education – £1,939.4m (+4.3%)*
• Department of Finance – £136.6m (-4.0%)
• Department of Health – £5,306.2m (+5.5%)*
• Department for Infrastructure – £370.2 (+1.1%)
• Department of Justice – £1,026.3m (+0.3%)
• The Executive Office – £55.3m (-4.0%)

*DE and DoH have an 0% and 2.6% actual uplift respectively against the 2017-18 Budget including in-year monitoring round allocations.

Spending decisions within government departments will be undertaken by each Permanent Secretary over the coming days. The budget will be also subject to legislative passage in the UK Parliament.

The detailed tables containing Northern Ireland’s finances for 2018-19 can be accessed by clicking here.

Commenting on the budget, NICVA Chief Executive Seamus McAleavey said:

“We welcome the publication of this budget and that the final document is better than what was presented in the Budgetary Outlook paper published before Christmas.

“We recognise that it is still a difficult situation. This is the fourth one-year budget, which fuels stagnation and destroys proper planning. This is true for Northern Ireland as a whole and particularly for voluntary and community sector organisations that have a financial arrangement with government.

“The gap in Northern Ireland’s finances have been plugged with one-off solutions such as transferring capital to resource spend and the confidence and supply money negotiated by the DUP.

“This leaves us in the same difficult financial position in the next financial year.”