Scotland's Redress scheme: FOI release

Information requested

1. Please provide details as to how much money has been paid out by the Redress Scotland scheme since it began in December 18.
2. Please outline how many applications this amounts to and how many of these applications were successful.
3. Please also outline how many of the applications were turned down or paused and what the reason was for applications being paused or stopped (waiver not returned for example or payment being refused by the applicant).
4. Please also supply details as to how many of these applicants were Fixed Rate applications and how many were Individually Assessed (please provide monetary values for each of the two categories of application as well)
5. Please also provide detail to how much money has been paid to third parties such as legal advisors and out of these payments please clarify how many payments they relate to and what category of applicant they were made under.

Response

In relation to your question 1, £2,203,356.56 has been paid since scheme launch. I note you refer to the scheme beginning in “December 18”, however the scheme was launched on 8 December 2021.

In relation to your questions 2, 4. and 5, you will find the information requested in the following table:

Type of Payment	No. of Payments Made	Total Amount of Payments Made
Fixed Rate	17	170 000
Individually Assessed	32	2 020 430.21
Solicitor Expenses	2	134.40
Applicant Expenses	40	790.95
Legal Fees	5	12 000

In relation to legal fees and “what category of applicant they were made under”, these fees were paid in relation to Individually Assessed applications.

In relation to your question 3 and how many application have been “turned down or paused”, providing this information could lead to identification of applicants to the Redress Scheme.

As such, an exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to 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 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.

With regard to your query around waivers not being returned, payment offers are valid for six months, and we are within the six month period for all payment offers.

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