Publication - FOI/EIR release

Education Scotland's car hire, parking and mileage reimbursements: FOI release

Published: 5 October 2017
Topic: Education, Public sector

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

FOI reference: FOI/17/02043
Date received: 6 September 2017
Date responded: 4 October 2017

Information requested

You asked for information on:

The mileage figures, car parking reimbursements and mileage reimbursements costs paid in expenses and copies of expenses forms in the years 2014-15 and 2015-16 for four specific members of staff.
The number of HMI staff who requested and used a Hire car on the following weeks beginning:

22/06/14
18/08/14
30/03/15
24/08/15
02/05/16
The number of times Education Scotland paid fuel surcharges for hire cars not being returned with full tanks and the cost of this for the years: 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Response

1. The table below details the total amounts spent on car parking, motor mileage costs and miles travelled for the named individuals in 2014-15 and 2015-16. The copies of the claim forms will be sent in four individual emails.

	Car Parking	Motor Mileage	Mileage
2014-15	£188.79	£4,991.85	11,093
2015-16	£960.67	£6,258.83	13,909

I have enclosed some of the information you have requested for question 1. However, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information requested.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some information which has been redacted from some of the enclosed documents. This exemption applies because the information is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. This is because releasing this information could lead to the identification of individual staff members and their home addresses.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

2. The number of HMI staff who requested and used a hire car in the specified weeks are listed below.

Week	HMI Numbers
22/06/2014	27
18/08/2014	11
30/03/2015	18
24/08/2015	18
02/05/2016	18

3. The number of times that Education Scotland paid fuel surcharges for hire cars not being returned with full tanks and the cost of this for the years 2014-15 and 2015-16 is set out below.

	Number	Cost
FY14-15	383	£11,597.12
FY15-16	375	£10,331.41

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