Publication - FOI/EIR release

Funding/payments to union organisations including Police: FOI review

Published: 19 July 2018
Directorate: Safer Communities Directorate
Topic: Law and order, Public sector

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

FOI reference: FOI/18/01572
Date received: 29 June 2018
Date responded: 18 July 2018

Information requested

Further to my letter of 29 June 2018, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) for:

The total amount of funding/payments made to all union organisations including but not limited to STUC, UNISON, UNITE, Scottish Police Federation and any other staff association/federation/union for Police Scotland by the Scottish Government from 2014/15 until present date.
Please break this down year on year, by Union, organisations/associations/federations.
Please give the title of the funding award in each instance.
The remit or purpose.
The conditions of funding/payment for each payment.

Response

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed with modification. I have concluded that you should have been provided copies of the original grant offer letters for all the organisations for 2014/15 to 2018/19, because while for most organisations and years the remit/purpose remains unchanged, changes were made to these for the Gay Police Association Scotland. The letters are also personalised, for example, the 2015/16 letter to the Women's Development Forum notifies them that they were unsuccessful in their bid for additional funding for a Coordinator role.

Officials' names and contact details have been redacted from the letters because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies, and disclosure 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 exemption 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 exemption.

Please note that sometimes the funding detailed in the grant offer letters differs from 'payments made' in Annex A of our original response because payments were not made in the same quarter, so that funding offered in one financial year may been have made the following financial year.

About FOI

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