Affordable Housing Supply Programme Coordination Group minutes: FOI release

Information requested

Under FOISA please provide the Affordable Housing Supply Programme Coordination Group minutes for meetings held since 18 August 2023.

Response

I enclose a copy of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme Co-ordination Group Minutes in respect of:

• 14 September 2023
• 19 October 2023
• 16 November 2023

The Minute of the meeting held in December 2023 is not yet available.

Text has been redacted in each of the three documents attached as the following exemptions apply: 

Section 38(1)(b) - Third party personal data. Personal information has been redacted from the documents. 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.

Section 29(1)(a) – Formulation/development of government policy. Information has been redacted where it relates to formulation or development of policy which includes the consideration or development of options and priorities for Scottish Ministers, who will subsequently determine which of these should be translated into political action and/or legislation and when.

Section 30(c) - Substantial prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs.

Section 33(2)(b) - Substantial prejudice to the financial interests of a UK administration. The Programme Co-ordination Group is an internal monthly meeting of More Homes Division officials to discuss progress and issues relating to the Affordable Housing Supply Programme.

It is essential for officials to be able to meet, in confidence, to discuss the delivery of the programme and their interaction with external stakeholders on a range of delivery issues. Disclosing the content of these discussions is likely to undermine stakeholders’ trust and partnership working with the Scottish Government and will substantially inhibit communications on these types of issue in the future.

Stakeholders will be reluctant to provide their views fully and frankly if they believe that their views are likely to be made public, particularly while discussions are still ongoing and these discussions relate to commercially sensitive or other issues such as views on the performance of individual organisations.

This would significantly harm the Government’s ability to carry out many aspects of its work, and could adversely affect its ability to gather all of the evidence it needs to make fully informed decisions. 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.

We recognise that there is a public interest in disclosing information as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate. However, there is a greater public interest in allowing officials a private space within which to meet as part of the process of exploring and refining the Government’s management of the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. This private space is essential to enable all options to be properly considered, so that good decisions can be taken based on fully informed advice and evidence, such as that provided by stakeholder partners.

Exemption 27(1) - Future publication: 12 weeks. With regard to the redaction of data relating to approvals, starts and completions, where this is data relating to October and November 2023 and not yet published, we have applied this exemption as we require to quality assure our data and release it in line with the Code-of-Practice-for-Statistics-REVISED.pdf (statisticsauthority.gov.uk).

About FOI

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FOI 202300386087 - Information Released - Annex

File type

23 page PDF

File size

1.0 MB