Evacuation of 500 homes due to Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC): EIR release

Information requested

A copy of all documents which discuss the announcement made by Aberdeen City Council that it would have to evacuate 500 homes due to the presence of Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete on 29th February 2024.

Disclosure to include all internal correspondence involving Ministers, Special Advisors, the media office and civil servants as well as any external correspondence with Aberdeen City Council officials.

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.

Response to your request

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested as set out in the attached Annex.

Some of the information you have requested is available from Aberdeen City Council’s dedicated RAAC website - RAAC Housing | Aberdeen City Council. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some 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 an exception(s) under regulation(s) 10 (4) (e) (internal communications) and 10 (4) (d) (material in the course of completion, unfinished documents, or incomplete data) of the EIRs applies to that information.

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. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because the rehoming announcement by Aberdeen City Council affected a large number of homes. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in the flow of free and frank discussions within government and the formulating of a response to reassure the public of the impact of the announcement on 29 February for upholding application of exception.

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 202400402826 - Information released - Annex

File type

13 page PDF

File size

343.5 kB