Scottish Government staff engaged in updating the ‘Scotland’s Future’ publication: FOI release

Information requested

Please could I request the following under the freedom of information legislation.

For each of the following years 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020 to present:

Details of the number of civil servants working on a paper to update/renew the Scottish Government’s paper ‘Scotland’s Future’.

Response

For the financial years 2015-16 to 2018 – 19 there were no members of staff engaged in work to update the Scottish Government’s ‘Scotland’s Future’ publication. Following the announcement in the Programme for Government in September 2019, that the Scottish Government would undertake work to update its plan for an independent Scotland published in 2014, a team was established during the following months to take forward that and other work.

As of 18 March 2020, there was a total of 7 members of staff in that team working on a range of duties which included work to update ‘Scotland’s Future’. On 18 March 2020, the Scottish Government announced that because of the Covid-19 crisis, the Scottish Government had paused work on preparing for an independence referendum this year. The team’s members were then redeployed to other work.

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