Correspondence with Water Industry Commission for Scotland: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for information related to WICS.

All correspondence (emails, digital messages, written notes etc) between the Scottish Government (including civil servants and ministers) and the Water Industry Commission for Scotland between November 2023 and today.

Can you please provide in full the resignation letter presented by Donald MacRae, the WICS chairman, to Scottish ministers.

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.

We have responded to your request in two parts.

Part 1: all correspondence (emails, digital messages, written notes etc) between the Scottish Government (including civil servants and ministers) and the Water Industry Commission for Scotland between November 2023 and today.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under the exception at regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIRs a public authority may refuse a request for information if it is 'manifestly unreasonable'.

The Scottish Information Commissioner's guidance on the regulation 10(4)(b) exception at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/Law/EIRs/EIRsExceptions.aspx says that there may “be instances where it is appropriate for the Commissioner to consider the proportionality of the burden on the public authority in terms of the costs and resources involved in dealing with a request when considering the application of this exception”.

In this case, the costs and resources involved in complying with your request would be disproportionate - as WICS is a non-departmental public body, the Scottish Government is required to engage on a number of topics including: direct sponsorship duties such as monthly meetings, Board
and CEO recruitment, pay policy and laying annual accounts in the Scottish Parliament. WICS is also a key stakeholder as the economic regulator for Scottish Water and we also engage regularly on topics such as oversight of Scottish Water's investment programme, policy development and
charging. Over the period requested we have identified over 2000 documents likely to be in scope of the request. Because of the volume of records which would need to be searched, and appropriate consideration given to redaction, a 20 working days extension to the response deadline (under regulation 7 of the EIRs) would still not make the request manageable. For these reasons, we consider that your request is manifestly unreasonable and so we are refusing it under regulation 10(4)(b).

As the exception is conditional we have applied the 'public interest test'. This means we have, in all the circumstances of this case, considered if the public interest in disclosing 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. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about WICS, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the efficient and effective use of public resources by not incurring excessive costs when complying with information requests.

You may however wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order to make it manageable. For example, you could specify the subject matter of the correspondence you are interested in, or restrict your request to a more concise time period, 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.

Part 2: Can you please provide in full the resignation letter presented by the WICS chairman to Scottish ministers.

I enclose a copy of the information you requested.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to all 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.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400435691 - Information Released - Annex

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