Correspondence relating to Former First Minister: FOI release

Information requested

1. 'Any mentions of Alex Salmond in any Scottish Government correspondence (including emails, attachments, letters, notes/records of phone calls, minutes of meetings, briefings or otherwise).
Please limit to the month of November 2017'.

2. 'Any mentions of Alex Salmond in correspondence from the First Minister or her office (including emails, attachments, letters, notes/records of phone calls, minutes of meetings, briefings or otherwise). Please limit to the dates of 1 March 2018 and 3 April 2018'.

Response

In terms of part 1 of your request, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing 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. 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 provide more information about the subject matter of your request or 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.

In terms of part 2 of your request, you confirmed on 19 January 2021 that you are seeking any documents between the dates of 1 March 2018 and 3 April 2018, as opposed to only these specific dates, as indicated in your request.

Our aim is to provide information whenever possible, however having conducted appropriate and proportionate searches for the information you asked for, I can confirm the Scottish Government holds no information within the scope of your request.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.

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.