Correspondence regarding Storm Babet and flooding funding: FOI release

Information requested

All discussions held by Humza Yousaf or other Scottish Government figures with insurance firms about Storm Babet help as he said here: https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/news/angus-mearns/4790871/storm-babet-first-minister-brechin-floods/ - Can this include any minutes from meetings held, correspondence between the groups, requests for meetings, etc and be from between October 15 2023 and the date of this FOI?

2. All briefing notes, correspondence and minutes held by the Scottish Government regarding financial support for those affected by Storm Babet, including internal correspondence, between October 15 2023 and the date of this FOI.

3. The UK Government announced a switch for flooding funding of £60m, has this cash been handed out and if not, why? UK Government reallocates £60m for Scotland's flood response after Storm Babet | STV News

4. All minutes and notes taken from the Storm Babet taskforce meeting chaired by Shona Robison.

5. How many councils have applied for money from the Bellwin scheme, how much have they received and how much overall is in the fund? - Can you include how much was in it before, and how much is in it now?

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 exception 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 exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception, 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 have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.

On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in Annex A.

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 202300387304 - Information Released - Annex A and B

File type

58 page PDF

File size

794.4 kB