Correspondence regarding councils from September 2023 to January 2024: FOI release

Information requested

1. All correspondence, including internal, notes from meetings held and minutes from meetings, and briefings, between the Scottish Government and the Scottish Fiscal Commission about the 2024/25 budget.

2. All correspondence, including internal, notes from meetings held and minutes from meetings, and briefings, about bankrupt councils between September 2023 and the date of this FOI.

3. All correspondence, including internal, notes from meetings held and minutes from meetings, and briefings, about income tax changes announced in the 2024/25 budget.
-Can this include all analysis undertaken about behavioural change?

4. All correspondence, including internal, notes from meetings held and minutes from meetings, and briefings, between Brian Souter and the Scottish Government, between September 2023 and the date of this FOI.

Response

With regards to your first and third request, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government.

Under section 12 of FOISA public authorities are not required to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying would exceed the upper cost limit, which is currently set at £600 by Regulations made under section12. You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could limit the range and types of information requested with a narrower focus, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website at: https://www.itspublicknowledge.info/how-do-i-ask.

I enclose copies of all of the information you have asked for, including internal, notes from meetings held and minutes from meetings, and briefings, about bankrupt councils between September 2023 and 8th January 2024. Please note some of the information in the attachments has been redacted under Section 38 (1)(b) (personal data relating to a third party) and Section 30(b)(ii) (substantial inhibition to a free and frank exchange of views).

On searching our records we have not been able to identify any correspondence in relation to your fourth request. The Scottish Government publishes all responses FOISA requests including earlier requests, some similar to this one, on our website: Publications - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

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 202400392146 - Information Released - Annex

File type

49 page PDF

File size

1.3 MB