Getting it Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) correspondence: FOI release

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


Information requested

You asked for the following information:
Please can the Scottish Government provide all correspondence including emails, telephone calls records and minutes between the Scottish Government and the Chair of the Panel Prof. Ian Welsh since September 2018 to present.

Response

As you have not specified the policy area or team in your request, we have interpreted your request as looking for information held by the Getting it Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) Policy team within the Scottish Government, who lead on GIRFEC policy in Scotland including involvement with the Practice Development Panel (the Panel).

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested in the annexes below.

Reasons for not providing information
An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, ie names and contact details, 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. Some of the information you have requested is available from the following link, which contains the previously published minutes of the Panel: https://www.gov.scot/groups/girfec-practice-developmentpanel/

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a copy of the minutes of the Panel from 21 March 2019 which you have requested because an exemption(s) under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to that information. Application of S27(1) means that the Scottish Government does not have to provide this information if its intention is to publish the requested documentation within the next 12 weeks, but only if it is reasonable to delay disclosing the information until the planned date of publication. We consider that it is reasonable to delay disclosure as the minutes have not yet been agreed by the members of the Panel.

The reason this exemption applies is because it is already the intention of the Scottish Government to publish the minutes of the Practice Development Panel meeting which took place on 21 March 2019. Once the minute is ready, we intend to publish it and you will be able to find it here: https://www.gov.scot/groups/girfec-practice-development-panel/

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-201900001305 Information released

Contact

Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000

The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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