Communications regarding Water Industry Commission to set minimum water charges: EIR release

Information requested

All communications, minutes and other notes of discussions within the Scottish Government on the issue of the powers of the Water Industry Commission to set minimum water charge levels in addition to charge caps and to establish a minimum income expectation on Scottish Water as part of the 2021/27 regulatory period.

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response to your request

I have broken our response in to 2 separate parts:

Part 1
"All communications, minutes and other notes of discussions within the Scottish Government on the issue of the powers of the Water Industry Commission to set minimum water charge levels in addition to charge caps".

I attach a copy of some of the information you requested.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to all of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party 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 exception 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 exception.

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 an exception(s) under regulation 10(4)(e) (internal communications) of the EIRs applies to that information.

This exception is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because the level of water and sewerage charges is of importance to customers. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in maintaining legal professional privilege.

Part 2
"All communications, minutes and other notes of discussions within the Scottish Government on the issue of the powers of the Water Industry Commission … to establish a minimum income expectation on Scottish Water as part of the 2021/27 regulatory period."

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.

FOI - 202200272110 - Information Released - Annex

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