Safe Access Zones Team shared file information: FOI release

Information requested

Shared ERDM Files

All items from the Safe Access Zones Team’s shared ERDM file that contain any of the following words: "Catholic," "prayer," "praying," or "pray.

If the team works from multiple shared files, the same request applies to all of them. Please provide the working names of these shared files. Please ensure that shared Outlook folders are also searched.

Additionally, provide screengrabs of the first five pages of the ERDM search results. This does not constitute the creation of new information but rather the formatting of existing information held in the ERDM system.

and

Emails and Correspondence

Please provide all emails related to the handling of this FOI request. Include all Teams messages relevant to this request.

Provide all correspondence between any ministerial private office and the FOI Unit regarding the handling of this FOI request. Include any advice given by the FOI Unit about this request.

If any meetings took place regarding this request, please provide a written record of what was discussed for both the FOI Unit and any ministerial private office involved. Please also send the compliance searches and redactions document.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving, and providing the information requested for Part 1 of your request would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. It may be helpful if I explain that we file our information by subject matter and not key words. To locate and retrieve the information we have searched all relevant files, using the four key words you have specified - “catholic,” “pray,” “prayer,” and “praying.” As a result, a large volume of items has been identified as possibly being within scope. Therefore, the resource required to comply with your request would exceed 40 hours (£600). 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 section 12.

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 specify the particular subject matter of safe access zones you are interested in or restrict your request to a specified date range, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted.

If you have a particular interest in The Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act 2024 - this was subject to both public and parliamentary scrutiny and there is a large amount of informationwhic h is already publicly available. The following link will take you to the relevant section of the Scottish Parliament’s website for this legislation: Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Bill | Scottish Parliament Website 

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested for Part 2 of your request. This is because we can only provide information that was in existence on the day that the request was made. According to the email correspondence, this request was received on the 15th of February, meaning that any correspondence that was exchanged on this date about this request should be considered as part of the response. There was no exchange of correspondence on that date.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.