Freedom Of Information requests received in relation to salmon farming: FOI release

Information requested

 

* The number of FoI requests made to the Scottish Government/Marine Scotland in relation to salmon farming, salmon farm regulation, salmon farming companies and the SSPO between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018; (Request 1)

 

*Any representations made by the Scottish Government to the Information Commissioner on the burden of salmon-related FOI requests on Government and Commissioner’s responses to those representations; (Request 2)

 

*An assessment of the resource allocated by the Scottish Government (hours spent and cost in staff hours, inclusive of overheads) between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018 for processing and responding to FOI requests into salmon farming issues; (Request 3) and

 

*An assessment of the number of individuals raising FOI requests in relation to the salmon farming industry. (Request 4)

 

Response

 

Request 1 – Marine Scotland received 82 Freedom of Information requests in relation to salmon farming, salmon farm regulation, salmon farming companies and the SSPO between 1 January 2018 and 31 December 2018

 

Request 2 – Marine Scotland made no representations to the Information Commissioner on the burden of salmon-related FOI requests on Government

 

Request 3 – The Scottish Government/Marine Scotland does not have the information you have asked for because the Scottish Government does not record the cost of replying to FOI requests.

 

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

 

Request 4 – During the period 1 January to 31 December 2018 Marine Scotland received  6 information requests from individuals in relation to the salmon farming industry.

 

Additional Information

 

You may wish to note that staff members respond to FOI requests as part of their normal day to day duties therefore a more accurate and up-to-date cost cannot be provided.

 

However, the following information may be of interest to you.  In 2012 the Scottish Government carried out a corporate analysis of the costs of FOI – published on the Scottish Government website at http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0040/00408430.pdf .  The analysis provided an annualised average cost for each stage that an FOI request can go through, e.g. request, review and appeal in 2011 – see Table 12 on page 15.  These average costs were:

Request: £219

Review: £419

Appeal: £1344

 

Therefore, any request that progressed to review would cost a total of £635 (request + Review). In the same way, any request moving through review to appeal would cost £1,979 (request + review + appeal).

 

You may also be interested to note that in addition to the 82 information requests received during the period 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018, 15 of these requests received review requests and 4 of these reviews progressed to the appeal stage.

 

The breakdown by category of requester of the 82 information requests during 2018 may be of interest to you.

Organisation – 65

Solicitor – 10

Individual – 6

Researcher – 0

Other – 1

 

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.