Deposit return enquiries and FOI requests response statistics: EIR release

Information requested

1. The number of employees assigned to deal with deposit return enquiries and FOI requests in each of the past 24 months along with a breakdown of their payscales.
2. The number of deposit return relates (a) enquiries and (b) FOI requests received in each of those months.
3. The number of deposit return FOI requests answered (a) on time and (b) late in each of those months.

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response

Question 1:

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested as prior to April 2023 the role of responding to enquiries, EIR and FOI requests relating to the Deposit Return Scheme was the responsibility of policy officials within the Circular Economy Division in addition to their other policy responsibilities. Therefore, this is a formal notice under Regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs confirming that the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

However, in April 2023 due to influx of correspondence, Parliamentary Questions (PQs), Environmental Information Requests (EIRs) and Freedom of Information (FOI) Requests, a correspondence hub was introduced as part of the newly established Deposit Return Scheme Division to lead on these workloads. I have included a breakdown of the hub’s staffing below:

Grade	Number of Staff	Full Time Equivalent
C1	1	1.0
B3	2	2.0
B2	3	2.2
B1	5	4.5

With effect from 1 April 2022 the pay ranges (in £) within the Scottish Government Main (SGM) pay bargaining unit are:

Pay step	A3	A4	B1	B2	B3	BF	C1	C2	C3
Max-3			29,102	33,520	41,642	32,847	52,355	68,540
Max-2	22,182	25,713	29,447	34,725	42,855	35,944	54,867	70,923	79,360
Max-1	23,335	26,595	30,440	36,330	44,888	38,016	58,849	74,002	80,255
Max	24,888	27,735	31,941	38,329	49,860	40,603	65,276	79,109	80,434

Further information regarding public sector pay that you may find helpful can be found here.

Question 2 and 3:

I have included statistics relating to the correspondene, EIRs and PQ workloads in Annex A.

It is important to note that the information contained in Annex A has been generated using our corporate systems and may not contain all relevant information due to limitations. The hub is also responsible for a number of enquiries which are not recorded on corporate system and therefore we cannot supply statistics for work handled in this way.

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.

Annex A - 202300360466

File type

3 page PDF

File size

233.2 kB