Flood risk management working group: EIR release

Information requested

All minutes of meetings of COSLA and the Scottish Government's flood risk management working group since July 2023.

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.

There have been three meetings of the Scottish Government Flood Risk Management Working Group within the timescale specified in your request (1 July 2023 to the date of your request on 4 December 2023) on the following dates:

• 19 July 2023
• 26 September 2023
• 11 November 2023

Meeting of 19 July 2023
Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
The Working Group held one meeting in the month of July 2023 (19 July) for which you have previously requested and received a copy of the minutes on 5 December 2023 as a part of our response under EIR request 202300371481. The full response has also been published online and a link to said publication can be found here.

Meeting of 26 September 2023
In regards to the meeting of 26 September 2023 I have included a copy of the information you have requested in Annex A.

On reviewing materials within the scope of your request a small amount of information has been redacted from the document disclosed under Regulation 11 – Personal Data as it contains personal information 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’.

Meeting of 11 November 2023
In regards to the meeting of 11 November 2023 the information you have requested has been withheld under regulation 10(4)(d) (material in the course of completion/unfinished documents). This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in releasing the information as part of an open, transparent and accountable government. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that unfinished or incomplete information is not disclosed when it might misinform the public or give a misleading impression of the Scottish Government’s view or position on the matter to which the information relates.

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 202300387712 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

2 page PDF

File size

80.3 kB