Details of Brexit preparations, including spend on consultancy and names of suppliers: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02630
Date received: 16 October 2018
Date responded: 19 November 2018

 

Information requested

 

You asked for:
 
1) Details of spend on external consultants or support on the consequences of Brexit, or mitigation of potential Brexit impacts (including supplier details and copies of material produced;
 
2) Copies of Brexit planning documentation and specifically minutes of meetings and internal briefing notes and reports; 
 
3) Copies of technical or advisory briefing documentation on Brexit produced by Marine Scotland and supplied to other government agencies or bodies; 
 
4) Copies of technical or advisory documentation supplied to Marine Scotland from other public bodies that relates to Brexit contingency planning (NB: Again, UKG/DA documentation may be in scope);
 
5) Details of any assessment that has been made of the financial impact on the organisation, either positive or negative, of the Brexit process; including details of any contingency fund of investment as a direct  consequence of Brexit.
 

Response

 

In relation to part 1) of your request above, please find below a table outlining spend by Marine Scotland on external consultants or support on the consequences of Brexit, and details of relevant suppliers:

 

Supplier	Title of Publication	Cost
Seafish Industry Authority	UK Seafood Trade Flows Data Analysis	£5,000
Defra (jointly commissioned work)	Economic Impacts of fishing sectors on localities	£30,000
ABP Mer	Seafood Trade Modelling Research Project: Assessing the Impact of Alternative Fish Trade Agreements Post EU-Exit	£79,118
Total Spend: £114,118

NB: these figures relate solely to external consultancy spend, and not total spend by Marine Scotland on Brexit preparedness. 

In relation to the other parts of your request, 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. This is because of the significant quantity of information held by Marine Scotland which is in scope of your request, and the associated cost of retrieving and providing this. 
 
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. 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