Spend on the Housing (Scotland) Bill: FOI release

Information requested

The total spent developing the Housing (Scotland) Bill so far.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, an exemption under section 17 of FOISA - information not held - applies in this instance as the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we do not have the information are explained below.

Scottish Government officials 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. A range of Scottish Government officials would be involved throughout the development of the Housing (Scotland) Bill (in terms of both internal work by officials and engagement with external third parties) which would constitute part of the overall total cost incurred. As noted above officials do not record the proportion of their time spent on any given matters, subsequently it would not be possible to determine the total internal Scottish Government costs attributed to staff time spent on the Housing (Scotland) Bill which would form a part of the total overall cost. Therefore, it is not possible to provide a “total cost” figure incurred by the Scottish Government developing the Housing (Scotland) Bill so far.

However, we are able to give an indicative figure that includes the staff resource costs for those that work exclusively on the Housing (Scotland) Bill and publication costs from January 2023 to 31 January 2025 (the day after your FOI request):

To date the indicative spend on the Housing (Scotland) Bill has been £568,050.

About FOI

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