Child protection or safeguarding concerns in Scotland: FOI release
Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
Information requested
Request 1: All correspondence (including emails and text messages) between Education Scotland and office of the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland on the issue of child protection or safeguarding concerns in Scotland, between 01/01/2020 and the date of this request.
Request 2: All correspondence (including emails and text messages) between Education Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council on the issue of child protection or safeguarding concerns in Scotland, between 01/01/2020 and the date of this request.
Response
Request 1 – While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the information you have requested for all correspondence (including emails and text messages) between Education Scotland and office of the Children and Young People's Commissioner Scotland on the issue of child protection or safeguarding concerns in Scotland, between 1 January 2020 and the date of your request is not held. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.
Request 2 – While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the information you have requested for all correspondence (including emails and text messages) between Education Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council on the issue of child protection or safeguarding concerns in Scotland, between 1 January 2020 and the date of your request is not held. The reason why we have no information is due to our Enterprise Vault permanently deleting any email exchanges we have had with Aberdeenshire Council. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested.
Please find attached at Annex A, a copy of our internal Safeguarding Concerns Handling Procedure which includes the standard email text we share with local authorities when dealing with any safeguarding
concerns. However, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information within the document because an exemption under section 38(1)(b), personal information of FOISA applies because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. 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.
You may also wish to refer to our Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy which is available on the Education Scotland website at Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy Education Scotland.
Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the link above, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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