Ministerial visits to Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Moray and Highland: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02199
Date received: 2 October 2017
Date responded: 30 October 2017

Information requested

Please provide me with the following information broken down in a case-by-case basis for the last full 24 calendar months:

1. How many visits have been made to anywhere in the Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire, Moray or Highland council areas by the First Minister, Deputy First Minister or other Scottish Minister?

2. Where was each visit, and what was the purpose of each visit?

3. What was the cost of each visit? If possible, please provide breakdowns for travel and accommodation for the minister, and any officials who were travelling with them.

Response

1. Scottish Government Ministers have visited the local authority areas you have requested as below. Please note this information relates to visits from August 2015 – August 2017 as we collate information on a bi-monthly basis.

• Aberdeen: 136
• Aberdeenshire: 44
• Moray: 23
• Highland: 158

2. You may wish to know we routinely publish details of all Ministerial engagements on the Scottish Government website. This data includes the date, engagement type, organisation/individual met with and subject of the engagement. Details can be found here: Ministerial Engagements

3. 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.

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. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on her website at: Commissioner's Tips

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