Scottish Water and sewage spill communications: EIR release

Information requested

• Communications between Màiri McAllan and Government officials regarding Scottish Water between 20 May 2021 and 29 March 2023.
• Communications between Màiri McAllan and Government officials regarding sewage spills between 20 May 2021 and 29 March 2023.

You have clarified that communications between Màiri McAllan and Government officials is in relation to SEPAs regulation of Scottish Water regarding sewage spills.

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

Some of the information you have requested is available from:

• Written question and answer: S6W-00264 | Scottish Parliament Website
• Urban Water Routemap - Scottish Water

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Additionally, some of the information you have requested has been made available in a previous EIR release. The information is available on the Scottish Government's website at: Information regarding the leakage of sewage since July 2021: EIR release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 10(4)(e) (internal communications) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reason why that exception applies is that many of the documents involve internal communications between officials and Ministers.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption for specific elements of the advice - it is clearly in the public interest that Ministers can properly answer Parliamentary questions, provide sound information to Parliament (to which they are accountable), and robustly defend the Government’s policies and decisions. They need full and candid advice from officials to enable them to do so. Premature disclosure of this type of information could lead to a reduction in the comprehensiveness and frankness of such advice and views in the future, which would not be in the public interest. However, we recognise that there is some public interest in the topic of CSO spills and therefore the factual material contained in the internal communications has been provided.

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.

EIR 202300375584 - Information released - Attachments

File type

58 page PDF

File size

3.9 MB