Woman’s Aid conditions of all funding: FOI Review

Information requested

• "Please also supply me with the total amount of funding supplied to Woman's Aid from 1st April 2014 until present date? Please break this down year on year?
• Please supply me with the conditions of funding, which stipulate the exact criteria that is required from Womans Aid appertaining to each payment from the public purse?
• Please also supply me with a list of frontline services and other organisations that have received training from Woman’s Aid since 1st April 2014, please break this down year on year until present date.
• Please also state what professional standards and quality assurance reporting is required to comply with the quality of training, this is to ensure the you are provided VfM whilst not cutting back on Quality."

Response

I have concluded that a different decision should be substituted. My reasoning is set out below.
You asked for a review specifically in relation to our response to parts 2 and 4 of your request, because you were dissatisfied with our application of section 12 of FOISA, as you did not believe it applied.

In carrying out my review, I have considered the case afresh and I have reviewed our records relating to the conditions of funding, which stipulate the exact criteria that is required from Womans Aid appertaining to each payment.

I have determined that the cost of locating, retrieving and providing the information in relation to this request would not exceed the cost limit of £600, and so we were not entitled to apply section 12(1) of FOISA. I have therefore provided a response to each part of your request below, and apologise for not providing this information sooner.

Please supply me with the conditions of funding, which stipulate the exact criteria that is required from Womans Aid appertaining to each payment from the public purse?

The conditions of funding, which stipulate the exact criteria that is required from Scottish Women’s Aid appertaining to each payment from the Scottish Government, are contained within the Grant Offer Letter/s issued to Scottish Women’s Aid for each financial year that funding is requested. I have attached at Annex A extracts of the relevant Offer of Grant letters, which provide the grant criteria for funding awarded to Scottish Women’s Aid covering the period of this request. Please note that some of the information within these documents has been redacted because it does not relate specifically to the grant criteria applied to the funding to Scottish Women’s Aid, and therefore it does not fall within scope of this request. 

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount of information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details of individuals. Disclosing this information would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. 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.

“Please also state what professional standards and quality assurance reporting is required to comply with the quality of training, this is to ensure the you are provided VfM whilst not cutting back on Quality."

The Scottish Government does not hold information on “what professional standards and quality assurance reporting is required to comply with the quality of training”. This is because there is no requirement within the conditions of funding provided to Scottish Women’s Aid for them to report to the Scottish Government on these matters.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have any of the information you have requested in relation to this part of your request.
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.

FOI-202000020269 - Information released - Annex A

File type

66 page PDF

File size

3.0 MB