Food Waste Reduction Programme Board: EIR release

Information requested

1. A full list of the members on the Food Waste Reduction Programme Board
2. What date the Food Waste Reduction Board was formed?
3. What the total cost to the Scottish Government from the date of formation to 4/10/2023 for operating the Food Waste Reduction Programme Board?

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.

Question 1

The Food Waste Reduction Programme Board consists of staff from the Scottish Government, Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). I have provided details below for your convenience:

• Scottish Government
• Iain Gulland - Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer (ZWS)
• Vicki White - Head of Materials (SEPA)

On reviewing the information within the scope of your request a small amount of information has been withheld under Regulation 11 - Personal Data as it contains personal information of Scottish Government officials and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and in Section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’.

Question 2

The Food Waste Reduction Programme Board was formed on 18 August 2020.

Question 3

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested as the only costs associated with the Food Waste Reduction Programme Board has been staff time.

It may help if I explain that Civil Servants operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of their work at any given time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on particular matters. It is therefore not possible to provide an expenditure figure regarding how much the Scottish Government has spent on work by Civil Servants involved with the Food Waste Reduction Programme Board.

Therefore, this is a formal notice under Regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs confirming that the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. It is important to note that although we do not hold the information and have applied Regulation 10(4)(a) – information not held, it is a requirement that we have to apply the public interest test.

Under regulation 5(1) of the EIRs, a Scottish public authority that holds environmental information must make it available when requested to do so. This duty is not absolute. In some cases, information is excepted from disclosure, under regulations 10 and 11 of the EIRs. However, all of the exceptions in regulation 10 (and parts of regulation 11) are subject to a public interest test. To clarify, even though we do not hold the information, because we are using EIRs Exception 10(4)(a) in response to your request, we are required to apply a public interest test.

Guidance can be found in the Key Concepts section under ‘Information Not Held’ and ‘The Public Interest Test’ in the attached Scottish Information Commissioner Briefings and Guidance document.

Further guidance on the public interest test can also be found on page 8 of the Scottish Information Commissioner guidance.

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.