Key Takeaways from the Foreign Office’s 2018-19 Departmental Accounts

BFPG Associate Sam Goodman takes a look at the 2018-19 Foreign Office Accounts and provides a useful summary of the key budget and staffing data.

Foreign Office funding remains volatile. While the FCO’s core budget increased in 2018-19 by £107 million – taking it back to its 2014-15 level – it is forecast to be cut by £62 million in 2019-20.

The amount of funding the Foreign Office has to spend at its discretion continues to fall. After accounting for peacekeeping, grants to the British Council and international organisations, and earmarked cross-departmental funding, discretionary funding last year stood at just 41.9%, compared to 55.5% four years earlier (2014-15).

The Foreign Office is increasingly reliant on cross-departmental pools of funding. Its total departmental budget is set to increase by £207 million (7.9%) this year, but the bulk of this new money is ODA funds from cross-departmental pools (the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund and the Prosperity Fund) which the FCO must annually bid for. Such funds are forecast to account for 28.5% of total FCO expenditure this year, compared to 7.8% five years ago.

Foreign Office staff numbers have increased, returning UK manpower to its 2010 level. The FCO increased its UK staff by 464 in the last year, including 181 overseas posts and 283 Whitehall-based staff. The number of locally employed staff also increased by 232, and they now account for over 61% of the FCO’s total manpower.

The Foreign Office continues to split its domestic and overseas staff unevenly, deploying fewer UK staff abroad than its French and German counterparts – currently 1,972 staff (39%) posted abroad and 3,083 (61%) in Whitehall, though the share posted abroad has risen 2% since 2014-15.

The Foreign Office has filled 696 of the additional 1,000 posts it promised to create by 2020, roughly one third UK-based, one third overseas, and one third locally employed. It must fill another 101 locally employed roles, 50 UK-based roles and 152 overseas posts by year end to meet this target.

The Foreign Office continues to omit important data from its accounts, including a detailed picture of the geographic distribution of UK staff overseas and staffing numbers broken down by grade – both of which were published in previous years.

Sourcing: Foreign and Commonwealth Office Annual Report and Accounts 2018 to 2019, and previous BFPG analysis in the report “Running out of Credit”. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views of the BFPG.