Sums paid to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited: FOI release

Information requested

Can you please stipulate all sums paid to date to Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited and Ferguson Marine (Port Glasgow) Limited since September 6, 2017, when a commercial loan facility of £6m was given by the Directorate for Economic Development.

Can you state firstly who the payee was, what the amount paid was, the date it was paid, the description of the payment, including, for example, whether it related to a commercial loan facility, a grant-in-aid to NDPB, a working capital payment, or capital payment to Ferguson for the build of vessels 801 and 802. Can you also state clearly who made the payment, whether it be, for instance, the Economic Development directorate, the Economic Policy directorate or the Covid Business Resilience and Support Directorate, or whatever the source was.

Can you also explain what grant-in-aid to NDPB means and any other jargon that might be used.

Response

Section 27(1) – Information intended for future publication
An exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA applies to some of the information requested because we intend to publish that information in the Autumn of this year and within 12 weeks of the date of your request. We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release all of this information before the planned publication date.

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 although we recognise that there is some public interest in release and this will be met by our planned publication. In the meantime, there is a greater public interest in taking the time necessary to ensure the information has been properly collated and checked before it is published as planned. Also, we see no public interest in disrupting our programme of work to release the information ahead of the intended publication date.

I have in the meantime, provided you with the costs provided to Ferguson Marine since the start of this 2023/2024 Financial Year which are included as an Annex to this request.

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FOI 202300369280 - Information Released - Annex

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