Storm Babet, Storm Gerrit and the Horizon Post Office scandal: EIR release

Information requested

1. All correspondence sent and received by Scottish Government, including internal, notes, briefings and minutes from meetings, about the plans for a vape ban in Scotland, between September 1 2023 and the date of this FOI.

2. All correspondence sent and received by Scottish Government, including internal, notes, briefings and minutes from meetings, about Storm Gerrit, including notes and minutes from the resilience room meetings, between December 15 and the date of this FOI.

3. All correspondence between the Scottish Government and UK Government about flood prevention between November 1 2023 and the date of this FOI.

4. How much money has the Scottish Government handed out for Storm Babet overall, including a breakdown of where this cash went to, and details about how much cash has been requested overall?

5. All correspondence between the Scottish Government, UK Government and Crown Office, about the Horizon Post Office scandal, between December 1 2023 and the date of this FOI.
-Include all minutes from meetings, and briefings ahead and after these meetings as well.

Response

As some of 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 Question 2, Question 3 and Question 4 of 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.

Question 1 (Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002)

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section 12.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify the subject matter(s) of the correspondence you are interested in or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Question 2 (Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004)

I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex A.

Question 3 (Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004)

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested as we have had no communication with the UK Government regarding Flood Prevention measures in the date range specified, therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. It is important to note that although we do not hold the information and have applied Regulation 10(4)(a) – information not held, it is a requirement that we have to apply the public interest test.

Under regulation 5(1) of the EIRs, a Scottish public authority that holds environmental information must make it available when requested to do so. This duty is not absolute. In some cases, information is excepted from disclosure, under regulations 10 and 11 of the EIRs. However, all of the exceptions in regulation 10 (and parts of regulation 11) are subject to a public interest test. To clarify, even though we do not hold the information, because we are using EIRs Exception 10(4)(a) in response to your request, we are required to apply a public interest test.

Guidance can be found in the Key Concepts section under ‘Information Not Held’ and ‘The Public Interest Test’ in the attached Scottish Information Commissioner Briefings and Guidance document.

Further guidance on the public interest test can also be found on page 8 of the Scottish Information Commissioner guidance.

Question 4 (Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004)

Grant funding is being provided to local authorities to allow them to issue flat rate grants to all households and businesses suffering from the impacts of Storm Babet. To enable councils to make the grant payments funding of £676,500 was offered to Angus Council, £33,000 to Aberdeenshire Council, £221,100 to Dundee City Council, and £11,550 to Perth and Kinross Council.

80% of the total grant was included as part a redetermination of the General Revenue Grant payments on 3 January with the balancing 20% to be included in General Revenue Grant payments at the end of March 2024.

£100k of additional funding is also being allocated to Angus Council to help those families who have lost everything during Storm Babet to resettle and rebuild their lives. This additional amount will be paid as a redetermination of Angus Council’s General Revenue Grant and be included in payment due at end of March 2024.

The Scottish Government has also set aside a budget of £1.8 million to support farmers in repairing flood banks damaged by the extreme rainfall during October. The agriculture floodbank repair scheme opened for applications on Wednesday 6 December and closed on 15 January. Applications are currently being processed.

The Bellwin Scheme addresses revenue and uninsurable expenditure incurred within a two month period from the date of the incident. This has been extended to 4 months for Storm Babet.

Councils then have four months from the date of the incident to make an interim claim, and final claims must be received within eight months.

Bellwin payments are only made once the local authority has exceeded its Bellwin Threshold which represents 0.2% of their net revenue budget for the year in question. This is the amount local authorities are deemed to set aside to cover unforeseen emergencies.

Question 5 (Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002)

I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.

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 202400394943 - Information released - Annex A and B

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335 page PDF

File size

3.9 MB

EIR 202400394943 - Information released - Documents 1 - 9

File type

47 page PDF

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634.2 kB