Scottish Government's cost of hiring PR agencies: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01532
Date received: 3 July 2017
Date responded: 21 July 2017

Information requested

Details of the amount spent by the Scottish Government on hiring public relations agencies to carry out work since 1 January 2012, breaking down this information by giving details of the nature of the work that was carried out, which agency was hired, how much they were paid and the date.

Response

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. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. 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 her website at: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx

You may however be interested to see some information that is published by the Scottish Government Marketing Unit:

2011-2012

http://www.gov.scot/About/People/Directorates/Communications/advertising-marketing/PR-Spend/Prspend28062012/prspend2011-12-28062012

2012-2013

https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20161002123336/http:/www.gov.scot/About/People/Directorates/Communications/advertising-marketing/PR-Spend/SG-PR-spend-2012-2013

2013-2014

/publications/advertising-spend-2013-2014

2014-2015

/publications/advertising-spend-2014-2015/Advertising%20spend%20-%202014-15.pdf?inline=true

2015-2016

/publications/advertising-spend-2015-2016/Advertising%20spend%20-%202015-16.pdf?inline=true

Nature of PR Services covered by PR:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Government/Procurement/directory/marketingservices/marketingservices/MarketingServicesMultiLotITT

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