Heat in Buildings Strategy information: EIR release

Information requested

May I please see all documents relating to your and other senior officials consideration of these other schemes (apart from the 3 mentioned by me) out of the 12 mentioned in the Scottish Government reportage.

Can I also ask why you did not seek to prevent this scheme from operating in this way, which surely breaches the Scottish public Finance Manual. Do you agree that it does? And if not, why not?

May I finally ask whether you provided any advice to any Scottish Government Minister counselling against these projects or any of them and if so to share the advice with me, and if you did not, did any of your officials do so and if so please share their advice too.

Response

This EIR was submitted as part of a wider letter. 

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested. This is enclosed at Annex A and Annex B.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This exception applies to Question 3 of your query because schemes are assessed by a technical panel against defined criteria and where a scheme fails to meet the criteria it is rejected by the panel and does not proceed. As such, no advice has been provided to ministers counselling against schemes. In addition, FOISA/EIR only applies to recorded information and not opinions or thoughts of civil servants, unless recorded in a document or email prior to a request. Therefore, the information requested in Question 2 of your request is not eligible under FOISA/EIR. You can find more information on the type of information covered under FOISA/EIR here: What can I ask for? | Scottish Information Commissioner (foi.scot).

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data 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. This exception applies to the documents provided within Annex B in response to Question 1.

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 202400424956 - Information released - Annex A

File type

2 page PDF

File size

92.2 kB

EIR 202400424956 - Information released - Annex B

File type

175 page PDF

File size

7.9 MB