Adult day services and respite services survey: FOI review

Information requested

Can I please be sent the letter and survey (including all questions and requests for information) Humza Yousaf sent to Health and Social Care Partnerships on the 25th of May 2022 about adult day services and respite services?

Can I also please be sent all survey responses from Health and Social Care Partnerships and local authorities broken down by area. This includes, but is not limited to, supporting information in narrative form, caveats and raw data sent to the Scottish government in response to the above request for information.

Response

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed with modifications.

I have released additional information on the establishments operated by external (independent, third and private sector). Namely the information held in the columns: Service Name, Provider Type, Main client Type, Max Capacity and Current Capacity. Where appropriate I have highlighted this additional information in yellow and I have not provided you the returns that were fully provided to you at the request stage.

In part, I continue to uphold the exemption under Section 33(1)(b) Commercial interests and the economy. Namely that its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the commercial interests of any person (including, without prejudice to that generality, a Scottish public authority).

An exemption under Section 33(1)(b) of FOISA applies to the information you have requested because it relates to the reported comments contained in the columns ‘If not fully open, please state reason’ and ‘Comments’. These comments have been provided by establishments operated by external (independent, third and private sector) service providers in a commercial environment. Publishing these comments could prejudice substantially the commercial interests of these providers in a competitive market and so some of the information in relation to these providers contained in some of their comments, has been redacted.

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. We recognise that there is some public interest in releasing all the information we hold on external service providers for reasons of transparency and to inform the public debate. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that the capacity of external service providers to meet the needs of market demands is not prejudiced in any way, which is not in the interest of the public.

For completeness, an exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) also applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. the names and contact details Local Authority employees, 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.

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 - 202200333971 - Information release

File type

105 page PDF

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1.1 MB