Number of Freedom Of Information requests rejected on cost grounds: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02186  
Date received: 15 August 2018
Date responded: 27 August 2018

 

Information requested

 

1. Total number of FOI requests received by the Scottish Government in each of the last 12 months
2. For each of these months, the total number of those requests which were rejected on cost grounds or where the requester was instead asked to narrow the scope of their request without a formal rejection

 

Response

 

Please note the below table, detailing the number of FOIs received by Scottish Government in the last 12, full calendar months. This also displays the number of those requests which were exempt under section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland)  Act 2002:

 

	Number of FOI requests received	Number of which exempt under section 12
August 2017	242	7
September 2017	205	10
October 2017	418	36
November 2017	294	27
December 2017	151	5
January 2018	306	29
February 2018	355	18
March 2018	341	34
April 2018	243	14
May 2018	292	37
June 2018	260	14
July 2018	238	9

 

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 we do not necessarily record all instances where “the requestor was asked to narrow the scope of their request without a formal rejection” in our FOI tracker.

We do sometimes contact requestors under our section 15 duty to advise and assist, to notify them that their request would be cost exempt and to advise as to reducing the scope. Some of this information may be recorded, but in order to identify such cases, we would need to check emails and case files relating to every request over the 12 months covered by your request.

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. In order to bring your request under the upper cost then it may be beneficial to inform us of a particular area you are interested in.

Furthermore 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.

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