The Herald today with another context-free report to help us know if that’s a big amount and if we should be concerned about it. All things being equal, you might expect the total in England, for the same year, to have been, ten times higher, £32 million.

Only for Local authorities and the UK Government civil service, not including the NHS so lower than the actual total amount, the figure in England last year, was £680 million, more than 20 times greater, per head of population.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/01/04/golden-goodbyes-council-staff-surge-highest-pandemic https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/08/surge-civil-servants-handed-100k-golden-goodbyes

Other public bodies (e.g., NHS trusts, arm’s-length bodies) report exit payments in individual annual accounts, but no England-wide aggregated total for all public sector bodies in 2024/25 appears publicly compiled yet so the above figure is modest but, hey ho, let’s just use that.

Why the difference? Have the years of Conservative Government values and managerialism in England created a culture, unlike in Scotland, where such payments have been normalised? Grok says No. He needs some tutoring from an old Prof methinks.