Scottish Government overseas network budgets and staff: FOI release

Information requested

You asked for “the costs to date of setting up these offices up {the Scottish Government overseas network}, the staff numbers and the amount of visitors who have visited the offices.”

“what the cost was to the Scottish taxpayer when the Scottish government set up it’s own facility at the 2014 Olympic games and how many people actually visited this site when the UK government had already provided a facility for Scotland.” To clarify, I am interpreting this element of your request to relate to the London 2012 Olympics as set out in my holding response of 2nd March 2020."

Response

In relation to the set up costs of the overseas network, some of the information you have requested is available from https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00296/.

The answer to FoI/19/00296 does not include Scotland House London. The cost to establish Scotland House London Hub was £1.65 million.

In addition, please find enclosed the number of staff posts and the operating budget for 2019/20 for the Scottish Government’s network of offices outside of Scotland.

Office	Posts	Budget 2019/20
Belgium	19	£      2,079,000
Canada	3	£        575,000
China	4	£        553,000
France	3	£        545,000
Germany	3	£        555,000
Ireland	3	£        525,000
USA	4	£        807,000
London	15	£      1,955,000

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The Scottish Government does not have the information as we do not hold data on the number of visitors to the Scottish Government network of offices outwith Scotland.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

In relation to costs associated with the Scottish Government presence at the Olympics, we have interpreted your request to concern the London 2012 Olympics rather than the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, where the Scottish Government did not have a presence. The cost of establishing Scotland House at London 2012 was £404,613, split between the 6 public bodies involved. All of the information around Scotland House at London 2012 is published online at the following link https://www2.gov.scot/scotlandhouse

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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.