Publication - FOI/EIR release

Edinburgh Tool Library (ETL) funding and grants: FOI release

Published: 14 October 2019
Directorate: Energy and Climate Change Directorate
Topic: Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/19/02171
Date received: 9 September 2019
Date responded: 4 October 2019

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

Information requested

You asked for the total amount received by the Edinburgh Tool Library (ETL) - Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation with charity number SC045162.
Providing a breakdown of all grants, if any, that were made to ETL, showing the names of grants/funds and total amount given broken down into years 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Additionally, I would like to see the outcomes/outputs for each grant awarded, evidence of milestones achieved and breakdown of spending for 2018 - 2019 funding.

Response

In response to your request, I can provide the following information regarding grants made to Edinburgh Tool Library.

2014/15 Awarded	2015/16 Awarded	2016/17 Awarded	2017/18 Awarded	2018/19 Awarded	Purpose
£	£	£	£29,796.00	£	To make tool lending accessible to more of Edinburgh
£	£	£	£1,100.00	£	To hold a series of consultation sessions to allow communities to shape access to the Tool Library.
£	£	£	£	£98,043.54	To expand the service and increase understanding of climate change and the importance of tackling waste through a number of initiatives
£	£	£	£	£32,874	To bring the service to less affluent communities. The pilot project’s mid-term report is available online: https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/easy- sharing-making-sharing-simpler- shopping/

Please refer to the attached documents for details of the outcomes/outputs for each grant awarded and evidence of milestones achieved. We are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exemption(s) under section.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why that exemption applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing all 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. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to the names of organisations 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.

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. 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

ANNEX
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
An exemption applies
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names/contact details of individuals, and disclosing it 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.

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.