Energy and Just Transition Strategy meeting notes: EIR release

Information requested

A copy of meeting notes relating to the Energy and Just Transition Strategy, including drafts, between 1st April 2023 and the present day.

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 most of the information you requested.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to all of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it 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 exception 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 exception.

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 exceptions under regulation 10(4)(e) (internal communications), 10(4)(d) (material in the course of completion, unfinished documents, or incomplete data), 10(5)(f) (third party interests) and 10(5)(e) (confidentiality of commercial or industrial information) of the EIRs applies to that information. Further details on this can be found in Annex A.

Please note that certain meeting notes are being released which are internal notes of meetings with third parties and these are not an official record of the meeting. A copy of a PowerPoint slide is also being shared which was attached to a meeting note and which was not produced by the Scottish Government.

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 202300376044 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

2 page PDF

File size

60.9 kB

FOI 202300376044 - Information Released - Annex B

File type

60 page PDF

File size

2.0 MB