Longest response time to a Freedom of Information request: FOI release

Information requested

Broken down by year for the past 10 years (I am happy to receive the information either by financial or calendar year):

The single longest wait for a Scottish Government response to a freedom of information request. (This is the period of time from when the request was received until the response was issued from the Scottish Government).

Response

Request Received (Calendar Year)	Response time (Calendar Days)	Response time (FOISA)
2018	14	10
2019	119	81
2020	218	152

For the purposes of responding to this request I have assumed that the term 'Freedom of information request' refers both to requests responded to under FOISA and requests responded to under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRS).

The data I have provided begins on 01 November 2018. At that time the Scottish Government transitioned to a new case management system for the handling of correspondence and formal information requests. No business need was identified to retain information relating to the time taken to issue a response on our previous case management system. So that was not transitioned and so we do not hold that information. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

I have included two columns, the first is the number of calendar days taken from receipt to response. This count includes non-working days, as in Saturday and Sunday and also the Scottish Bank Holidays. The second column is the number of days taken as per FOISA. This does not include weekends and does not include Scottish Bank Holidays.

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.