Scottish international offices: FOI release

Information requested

Details for each of the international offices maintained by the Scottish Government for the most recent (12 months) period: a) headcount, FTE and total costs; b) most recent annual report or equivalent.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount of the information you have requested because an exemption under section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. This is because it is personal data of a third party, specifically the names of individuals, 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.

This above noted exemption applies to the attached monitoring report. An additional redaction has been made to that report as it contained information that is out of scope of the request. All other information you requested has been provided. 

The attachment has been separated into two parts due to file size.

For publishing purposes due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above. If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.
 

OFFICE/COUNTRY	BUDGET FOR (2020-21)	STAFF HEADCOUNT (FULL TIME EQUIVALENT)
Brussels, Belgium	£2,088,000	17 (16.8)
Washington, USA	£811,000	4 (4)
Beijing, China	£554,000	4 (4)
Dublin, Ireland	£572,000	3 (2.8)
Berlin, Germany	£549,000	3 (3)
Ottawa, Canada	£575,000	3 (3)
Paris, France	£558,000	3 (3)

Explanatory Notes
1. In addition to the 17 staff paid for from the Brussels office budget set out above, 2 further posts are funded from a combination of other Ministerial Portfolios due to the nature of their roles. To reduce the risk of identifying individuals and protect personal data, staff related costs based on between one and four people are withheld.

2. The contribution to rent and utilities for Scotland House Brussels also falls outside the budget set out above. The Scottish Government’s contribution to the cost of rent and utilities for Scotland House Brussels in financial year 2020-21 was £240,086.64 The Scottish Government shares this space with other Scottish organisations including Scotland Europa, a wholly owned subsidiary of Scottish Enterprise.

3. Please find the most recent monitoring report, our annual report equivalent for international offices, attached separately. This report covers the 2019-20 period and is the only available for the most recent period. This report was not published given reprioritisation of work during the organisation’s response to COVID-19 but is being released to fulfil the request. The 2020-21 monitoring report is not scheduled for publication until June 2021.

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.