Freedom Of Information responses including the Public Interest Test: FOI release
- Published
- 14 November 2018
- Directorate
- Constitution Directorate
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Date received: 4 November 2018
Date responded: 12 November 2018
- The number of responses in favour of withholding information.
- The number of responses in favour of disclosing information.
From 1 April 2018 to 30 September 2018, we responded to 1309 FOI(S)A Requests and the Public Interest test was applied in favour of partial or non disclosure 181 times.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. Our case management system records information about exemptions where consideration of the public interest (PI) test has resulted in information being withheld, either wholly or in part. However, it does not record information regarding cases where the PI test applies but the decision was in favour of disclosure as there is no requirement under FOISA for this information to be recorded, and we have no business requirement to do so.
This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.
The below table details the number of responses in favour of withholding information – we would wish you to note that the parameters of our reporting system has allowed us to confirm instances where just one of the Public Interest exemptions was applied but there are instances where multiple exemptions are applied in one response and therefore we have included an extra row depicting such.
| Public Interest Exemption |
Partial Disclosure |
Non Disclosure |
| 27(1) |
3 |
5 |
| 27(2) |
1 |
0 |
| 28 |
1 |
3 |
| 29(1)(a) |
12 |
4 |
| 29(1)(c) |
1 |
1 |
| 30(b)(1) |
16 |
3 |
| 30(b)(2) |
9 |
0 |
| 30(c) |
3 |
6 |
| 33(1)(a) |
1 |
0 |
| 33(1)(b) |
13 |
4 |
| 35 |
0 |
1 |
| 36(1) |
3 |
2 |
| 39(1) |
2 |
0 |
| 39(2) |
1 |
0 |
| 41(a) |
1 |
0 |
| Multiple Exemptions |
73 |
12 |
| TOTALS |
140 |
41 |
These figures have been extracted from our Freedom of Information Tracker database. This is an operational tool used by our Case Handlers and was designed primarily for day to day operational functions, rather than detailed statistical reporting.
A further breakdown of how FOI requests were responded to within this period is shown in the table below:
| Reponse Decision |
Number of cases |
| Full disclosure |
442 |
| Partial disclosure |
371 |
| No information released (reasons include upper cost limit applies, information not held, and all absolute and qualified exemptions) |
480 |
| Request invalid |
16 |
| Total |
1309 |
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
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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