Drug Taskforce Funding - River Garden Ayr: FOI release

Information requested

1. Please provide the full audit trail regarding the funding of River Garden Auchincruive from the Scottish Government Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme.

2. Please can you provide paperwork regarding reporting since the funding was awarded?

3. Please can you provide correspondence from the Drug and Alcohol Ministers and in the case of Elena Whitman, correspondence with the First Minister?

Further to this, on 27 February 2024 you provided further clarification as detailed below:

"The time frame would be since the Scottish Government began providing River Garden with funding through Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme in November - so the correspondence before the funding was awarded, applications and communications after that, since as far back as Jan 2020".

Response

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the format you asked for.

In response to question 1 of your request, all of the audit trail regarding the funding for River Garden from the Residential Rehabilitation Rapid Capacity Programme can be found in Annex A.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details of individuals, 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 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.

In response to question 2 of your request, all paperwork regarding reporting for River Garden's funding can be found in Annex B. An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details of individuals, 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 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.

In response to question 3 of your request, the Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because there is no correspondence from the Minister for Drug and Alcohol and in the case of Ms Whitman, correspondence with the First Minister.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

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 - 202400399377 - Information released - Annex A

File type

216 page PDF

File size

6.0 MB

FOI - 202400399377 - Information released - Annex B

File type

79 page PDF

File size

3.1 MB