Children's soft play centres correspondence: FOI release

Information requested

Copies of any emails received by Scottish Ministers from 1 August 2020 to 30 September 2020 from anyone identified as owners or operators of children’s indoor or soft play centers or similar.
You also asked how many meetings have Ministers in the Scottish Government had with anyone identified as owners or operators of children’s indoor or soft play centres or similar from 1 August 2020 to 30 September 2020

Response

I enclose a copy of correspondence involving Scottish Ministers in relation to children’s indoor soft play centres in Annex B of this letter. However, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. The reasons why this exemption applies is explained in Annex A of this letter.

In response to your second request, there have been three Ministerial Meetings that have taken place with those identified as owners or operators of children’s indoor or soft play centres. I have provided information below:

• Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills had a telephone conversation with Soft Play owners on 20 October.
• Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills had a telephone conversation with Scottish Government officials and Scottish Indoor Play Centre Owners & Management Group on 29 September.
• Jamie Hepburn, Minister for Business, Fair Work and Skills had a telephone conversation with a Soft Play owner on 22 September.

ANNEX A

An exemption under section38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you have requested as follows:
This information relates to personal data relating to a third party and applied in the following cases:

• Scottish Government officials below the Senior Civil Service.
• Names of individuals who did not give permission for release.

It would not be the expectation of these individuals that their personal information would be released 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.
I am satisfied that the information that has been withheld constitutes the ‘personal data’ of the individuals concerned, as defined in section 1(1) of the DPA.
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.

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FoI-202000092805 - Information released - Annex B

File type

78 page PDF

File size

2.6 MB