Personal Footcare Guidance equality impact assessment: FOI Review

Information requested

Original request 202500459528

A copy of the equality impact assessment you developed in relation to this guidance. Including, people who live in remote and rural areas in Scotland, who do not have a carer or family member to cut their toe nails, and who cannot cut their own toe nails for a variety of reasons such as physical difficulties or visual impairments.

Response

Thank you for your review request dated 26 April 2025 under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). You asked for this review in response to the information that was provided to you by Scottish Government on 16 April 2025.

I am a team leader within the Chief Nursing Officer’s Directorate in the Scottish Government and I have been asked to review an FOI response regarding your request for:

A copy of the equality impact assessment you developed in relation to this guidance. Including, people who live in remote and rural areas in Scotland, who do not have a carer or family member to cut their toe nails, and who cannot cut their own toe nails for a variety of reasons such as physical difficulties or visual impairments.

Firstly, I would like to inform you that the exemption applied in the original response (exemption under section 22), was incorrect. This is an exemption under UK FOI legislation and is not applicable in Scotland. The corresponding exemption in Scotland is section 27, which means that there must be a planned publication taking place within 12 weeks prior to the receipt of your original request. When applying this exemption, there must then be a consideration as to whether the decision to withhold information out-ways the public interest in the information requested. I will therefore conduct this review under the section 27 exemption.

In terms of the stated exemption, I cannot find any evidence which demonstrates the intention to publish the EQIA within 12 weeks prior to the receipt of your initial request and so this exemption should not have been applied to withhold the information. I have therefore attached a copy of the draft EQIA within this response.

An exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, names of individuals, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. I am unable to redact comments, therefore I have added what these are with green highlight after the section they apply to in order to protect the identity of junior members of staff.

From my reading of your request, you are looking for information on how personal footcare services for those in rural areas would be impacted by the guidance and how this in turn influenced decision-making. An EQIA is an assessment to consider impacts on those with protected characteristics, such as age, disability and ethnicity. Where someone lives is not considered to be a protected characteristic therefore the impact rurality has on personal footcare has not been addressed within the requested EQIA.

I have not been able to find any information pertaining to the impact on rurality when carrying out this review and I would encourage you to contact your local health board if you have any questions on their footcare services as it is the responsibility of health boards to provide appropriate services for their local population.

About FOI

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FOI 202500463472 - Information released - Annex

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