Correspondence between Transport Minister and Orkney Islands: FOI release

Information requested

1. How many times has the Scottish Government's Transport minister met with Orkney Islands council in relation to the ferries taskforce over the last 12 months? Dates of these meetings?
2. Could you supply minutes of these meetings and who attended them? If not, why not and when will they be published?
3. When is the next scheduled meeting between the transport minister and Orkney Islands Council?
4. All correspondence (emails, whatsapps, texts, call) between Orkney Islands Council members/officials and Transport Scotland officials, Jenny Gilruth's office, her special advisers, over the last six months about the ferries taskforce or just ferries?

Response

Answer to your request

1. The Minister of Transport has met once with Orkney Islands Council over the last 12 months in relation to the ferries task force. This meeting was on 31 January 2023.
2. The Minutes of that meeting will be published shortly on the Transport Scotland website and will include the names of those who attended.
3. The next scheduled meeting between the Minister for Transport and Orkney Islands Council is scheduled for week beginning 17 April 2023, and will be confirmed as soon as is possible.
4. See below.

Response to your request

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600 due to the volume of documents to be considered. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600, for example by narrowing the scope of the subject of the ferry correspondence you are interested in. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.