Financial · Islands Observatory

Budgets, savings, and where the money actually flows

Public lensHealth budgets on islands are approved, overspent, and then quietly topped up — by reserve draws (Jersey), late allocations (Shetland), repayable loans called "brokerage" (Orkney) or by simply exceeding the funding formula (Isle of Man, £32m).

Politician lensThree questions travel across every island here: (1) What is the mechanism to return to budget/formula, and by when? (2) How much of the savings target is recurring — and how much delivered recurring last year? (3) What arrives as late/supplementary funding, and would the year have balanced without it? The cards below carry the numbers to plug in.

Management lensThe pattern to beat: non-recurring savings papering over recurring gaps (Shetland delivered £0.59m recurring vs £1.87m target). The practice to borrow: NHS Shetland's Helyer MRI suite — capital investment that repatriates activity and cuts patient-travel spend (842 attendances in year one), the same logic as IoM's tertiary strategy.

Per capita — spend per head and total expenditure, derived

Sources & Uses

hover any node or ribbon for its source · orange edge = the story · DERIVED = calculated, not reported

All five pots, side by side — original budget vs what actually arrived

The flags — nine findings that frame every budget debate

Budget vs Actual — approved budget against what was actually spent

Isle of Man — Manx Care budget vs expenditure, 2021/22–2025/26

Crown Dependencies — approved budget vs outturn, latest year

Savings — targets, delivery, and how much of it actually recurs

Scottish island boards — savings target vs delivered, 2024/25

Recurring savings are the only kind that close a structural gap. Shetland: £4.482m target (£1.872m recurring) → £3.883m delivered, only £0.593m recurring; shortfall covered by additional SG funding. Orkney: £4.0m target → £4.07m delivered, £2.88m (71%) recurring. Western Isles: annual audit report not yet collected — gap. Sources: Audit Scotland AAR 2024/25 (Shetland paras 47-48; Orkney savings section).

Isle of Man — five-year savings (CIP) delivery

Manx Care reports ≈£42m of cash-out savings over 2021/22–2025/26. DHSC assessments grade mandated CIP targets as met or exceeded each year — but the cash-out level required to return to the baseline allocation fell short, and reliance on non-recurrent savings means the same gap must be re-closed every year, plus new targets on top. The yearly CIP split is published only as a chart (Fig 4) — extraction is a collection target. Manx Care, Five Years In Review (Jun 2026) p29 · DHSC Assessments of Manx Care 2021-25

Methodology & data governance notes

Sources. Every displayed figure carries a source string (document + date) reachable by hover, tap or inline chip. The consolidated data layer (observatory_data.js) is generated by script from extraction CSVs in the observatory library; nothing is hand-typed into pages. Primary sources: government/board annual reports and accounts, Audit Scotland/KPMG annual audits, HIS inspection reports, C&AG/JAO reports, DHSC Assessments of Manx Care, Tynwald Hansard and written answers, ONS/NRS/PHS statistics, CAA punctuality statistics, and FOI responses held in the library.

Comparability. Jurisdictions differ in definitions, targets, reporting windows and population bases. Basis lines are mandatory on comparison rows; 3-year rolling averages (small populations) are marked and never silently mixed with single-year rates; derived figures (per-capita, per-1,000, inversions) are labelled derived; DERIVED Sankey nodes state their derivation.

Gaps. Missing data is displayed, not hidden: red chips = no comparable public figure exists; blue chips = published somewhere we have not yet extracted (each maps to a roadmap item). Gaps are findings.

Views. The Public view uses plain language and does not draft formal requests; Politician and Management views expose question/FOI wording and benchmark framing. The view switch changes emphasis, never the underlying numbers.

Corrections. Errors: observatory@coalfinch.com. Build log and change history: see the Roadmap page.