Debate contribution: Assembly Commission Budget for 2026-2030

Debate contribution by Mr Trevor Clarke on 11 November 2025.

MLA

Mr Trevor Clarke

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

11 November 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Assembly Business

Heading

Assembly Commission Budget for 2026-2030

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5349098

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

The Assembly Commission has a duty under section 40 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to:

"provide the Assembly, or ensure that the Assembly is provided, with the property, staff and services required for the Assembly’s purposes."

It is on the basis of the Assembly's requirements that the Assembly Commission develops its draft budget. The draft budget is scrutinised by the Audit Committee, with input from the Department of Finance to help inform the Committee's scrutiny. The Commission presented its 2026-2030 draft budget to the Audit Committee on 17 September 2025 and provided further clarification to the Committee on 24 September 2025, responding to the issues raised by the Department. Following that scrutiny of the Commission budget, the Audit Committee produced its report and laid it in the Assembly on 23 October 2025. The Commission thanks the Audit Committee and its officials for its work and scrutiny. Agreement of the motion will enable the Assembly to determine the resources that the Commission will be given to support the Assembly in carrying out its legislative functions. Once agreed, the budget will be notified to the Department of Finance for inclusion in the three-year Budget to be presented to the Minister of Finance. The budget will ensure that the Assembly can carry on its core functions and continue the programme of investment in key areas such as IT, building maintenance and staffing. When the Assembly was not sitting, the Commission had limited investment in those areas, and that underinvestment now needs to be addressed. In line with what was being requested of the Departments, the Commission has prepared a multi-year budget to cover the financial periods of 2026-29 for resource departmental expenditure limit (DEL) and 2026-2030 for capital DEL. The total resource DEL budget for 2026-29 for each of the three years is £67·36 million, £71·07 million and £69·06 million. The capital DEL budget for 2026-2030 for each of the four years is £1·32 million, £2·45 million, £1·79 million and £1·52 million. There are also costs associated with the operation of the Windsor Framework Democratic Scrutiny Committee, but those costs are funded directly by Her Majesty's Treasury, and, while those figures were reported to the Audit Committee for completeness, the Assembly is not being asked to consider or approve those figures today. The first category in the Commission's budget is income, and the Commission expects to receive just over £0·6 million each year. Substantially all that relates to the recovery of ministerial salaries from Departments. The second category relates to the salaries and allowances paid to Members and those incurred by Members in establishing and running constituency offices. The total budget for Member-related costs for the three years from 2026-29 is £21·43 million, £23·75 million and £22 39 million.

Within that, the budget for Members and officeholders' salaries over the same period is £7·2 million, £7·1 million and £7·3 million.

Members' salaries continue to be provided under Part 1 of the Assembly Members (Salaries and Expenses) Determination (Northern Ireland) 2016. However, the responsibility for determining Members' salaries and pensions will fall to the new Independent Remuneration Board that is currently being established. It is not possible to anticipate whether the board will introduce any changes to Members and officeholders' salaries or pensions or the scale of the changes, if it makes changes. Therefore, the budget is based on the rates that are set out in the current determination, allowing for a small prescribed annual below-inflation increase of £500. The reduction in the Members' salary for 2027-28 reflects the financial impact of the dissolution of the Assembly and the subsequent election of the new Assembly. Members may recover the costs of establishing and running a constituency office, including the purchasing of equipment, utility costs, rent, rates and support staff salaries. The amount required for the three years is £13·6 million, £15·3 million and £14·5 million. The budget is based on the current rates of allowances, and the key driver for the increase in 2027-28 is the financial impact of the Assembly election in May 2027. Members' annual travel allowances, which assist with the cost of business travel, are forecast to be just under £0·4 million each year. Members' other costs include security measures, disability allowances, ill-health retirement and resettlement allowances. The third major category in the budget covers salary payments for Commission staff and the administrative costs incurred in delivering the full range of services that are needed by the Assembly. The Commission's staff salary costs for the three years are budgeted at £28·9 million, £29·7 million and £30·5 million. Those costs provide for a net increase of eight staff in the first two years, falling to seven in the final year of the budget period. Those staff will support the delivery of the Commission's public engagement strategy, project delivery and business improvements. The 'Assembly Commission Corporate Strategy 2023-2028' contains several objectives that relate to the modernisation of IT hardware and software systems, the website and corporate systems. Those activities help to ensure that the Assembly operates in a modern and secure environment that is effective, fit for purpose and secure from the increasing risk of cyberattacks. Administrative costs for the three years are budgeted at £11·3 million, £11·7 million and £10·7 million. Administration costs cover a wide range of expenditure incurred in supporting Assembly and Committee business and operating Parliament Buildings. As Members will be aware, there are a number of issues with water ingress in Parliament Buildings related to the roof replacement project, which was completed in 2015. Construction and Procurement Delivery (CPD) is overseeing that work on behalf of the Assembly Commission, and the work is taking place in two phases. The first phase is to fix the rear parapet and the three internal courtyards. It has been subject to considerable delay for a range of reasons. However, it is anticipated that the work will commence in this financial year, with the second phase concluding in 2027-28. The timing and costs, however, will be subject to final scoping and tender. The next category is payments to parties under the financial assistance for political parties scheme (FAPP) 2024. The budget for the FAPP scheme costs £1·1 million each year. The penultimate category relates to depreciation charges, which have been budgeted for the three years at £5·3 million, £5·6 million and £4·9 million. That is mostly due to the estimated depreciation of the annual valuation of Parliament Buildings. However, it also reflects the level of expenditure on other assets in the preceding years. The Commission has budgeted capital DEL of £1·32 million, £2·45 million and £1·7 million over the three-year period. For capital only, the Department of Finance has requested an estimate for 2029-2030, which is budgeted at £1·52 million. The capital budget includes expenditure on the IT modernisation project, which, once complete, will have migrated all existing on-premises infrastructure and IT applications to a secure cloud-based platform. That will also provide for a new website, content management system and electronic records and document management system. The Commission continues with its programme of improvement to the space of Parliament Buildings, which will include the upgrading of the Long Gallery, education rooms and shared spaces, as well as three major projects to refresh security measures, including the replacement of the east and west security huts. The Commission's budget includes a diverse range of activities that reflect all the work on the Building to support Members, and I know that Members will join me in paying tribute to the Commission staff who deliver that work. I commend the 2026-2030 budget proposals to the House.

1,264 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:37 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification