Bellwin Scheme applications: EIR release

Information requested

1. How many (a) notes of interest regarding a potential claim and (b) applications has the Scottish Government received to the Bellwin Scheme in each year since 2011? Please provide a breakdown of these by (a) local authority, (b) the reason for the application, (c) how much was requested, (d) if applicable, how much did the Scottish Government provide, (e) the date the application was received, (f) the date the decision was made to either accept or reject the application, and (g) the date of the final payment being made.

2. Further to the answers to question S5W-16913 by Derek Mackay on 31 May 2018 and S4W-29354 by John Swinney on 28 January 2016, what information does the Scottish Government hold on the (a) average and (b) longest time taken between incidents occurring and payments being made to local authorities under the Bellwin Scheme.

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.

The answer to your questions are as follows.

1. However, we can provide you with the details of the funding provided to local authorities through the Bellwin Scheme for the years in which claims were made.

Local Authority	2009-10	2012-13	2015-16	2020-21
Aberdeenshire	£450,999		£2,065,929
Angus			£362,165
Highland				£292,340
Moray	£281,726
Perth & Kinross			£750,961	£334,105
Scottish Borders		£917,334	£3,797,731
Total	£732,725	£917,334	£6,976,786	£626,445

Guidance on the operation of the Bellwin scheme, including information on the types of expenditure that are eligible for support and the deadlines for notification and payment, is available at: Bellwin+Scheme+-+Updated+Guidance+Notes+for+Claims+and+Claim+Form+-+16+April+2021.pdf (www.gov.scot)

Where a local authority has eligible expenditure, payments are only made once the local authority has exceeded its annual Bellwin threshold which represents 0.2 per cent of their net revenue budget for the year in question. This is the amount local authorities are deemed to set aside to cover unforeseen emergencies across each financial year. You can find the Bellwin Thresholds for each local authority in 2023-24 here: Threshold amounts - Bellwin Scheme: guidance and application form - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

Bellwin activations do not exist in isolation and the threshold applies cumulatively to all emergency incidents occurring during the financial year. It is therefore possible that a local authority could experience multiple emergency incidents in a financial year. All local authorities are encouraged to notify the Scottish Government of a potential claim, even if the costs of an individual incident are unlikely to breach the threshold for the financial year, as the cumulative expenditure over multiple emergency incidents may breach the threshold at a later date.

2. Responsibility for making a claim under the Bellwin Scheme rests with the local authority. The Scottish Government’s guidance states that an interim claim should be received by the Scottish Government within four months of the incident. Interim claims represent 90 per cent of the total anticipated claim for additional eligible expenditure and are paid within 15 working days of receipt. Final claim must be submitted with 8 months, following a comprehensive audit the remaining payments are again paid within 15 working days. All deadlines above are subject to agreement between local authorities and the Scottish Government in exceptional cases. Information on the time taken between incidents occurring and payments being made to local authorities is not routinely collected.

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 under regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs applies to that information the reasons why that exception applies are explained in the Annex.

ANNEX - REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

The Scottish Government does not have the information
Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested because the Bellwin Scheme does not operate on the basis of applications by local authorities.

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. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about administrative specifics of the Bellwin Scheme and the time taken for the Scottish Government to make payments to local authorities, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.