Ministers meetings related to Short Term Accommodation Association: FOI release

Information requested

 

Can you please provide the following info:
Please could you confirm how many times officials or government ministers have met with representatives from the following groups:

• Inline Policy
• Lifealike Ltd
• AIRSORTED

Or held meetings relating to the Short Term Accommodation Association.

In each instance, please provide the dates of each meeting, who attended, and a short-summary of the purpose of the meeting.
Where meetings have occurred, please could you provide me with any recorded information held that relates to meetings with these groups. This could include, but should not be limited to, briefing materials, reports, power point presentations, meeting minutes and emails related to issues raised at the meetings.

 

Response

 

I enclose copies of the information you requested which is available. As you may be aware, the Scottish Government announced on 10 July 2018, in the Scottish Government’s Response to The Scottish Expert Advisory Panel on the Collaborative Economy, that a Short Term Lets Delivery Group would be established to consider issues related to short term lets. The information we are providing you with dates from that time, or immediately beforehand, as we do not have a comprehensive register of previous meetings with Inline Policy, Lifealike Ltd, Airsorted and the STAA.

To locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all the records of the Scottish Government. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to the names of individuals or organization with whom we have corresponded. 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. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the additional information requested relating to earlier meetings would exceed the upper cost limit.

The answer to your specific questions are:
1. Officials have not had any meetings with Inline Policy and Lifealike Ltd.

2. Officials have had meetings with Airsorted on two occasions since the Short Term Lets Delivery Group was established (on 6 September 2018, 1 November 2018).

3. Officials have had meetings with the STAA on three occasions since the Short Term Lets Delivery Group was established (on 6 September 2018, 1 November 2018, 13 December 2018). Officials also met with the STAA prior to the establishment of the Short Term Lets Delivery Group on 26 June 2018.

 

Notes of all those meetings, including details of which organisations were present, together with associated emails are enclosed. Where necessary, the notes and emails have been redacted to remove personal data (see the Annex to this letter for details).

 

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.

FOI-19-00513 Annex A

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77 page PDF

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