Information on Freedom of Information requests submitted to the Scottish Government: FOI release

Information requested

How many FOI requests were submitted to the Scottish Government in 2024?

How many requests were submitted by the requestor who submitted the most requests?

Information held on how much staff time and overall cost to the Scottish Government of handling a) all requests and b) the most prolific requestor.

Response

The answers to your first two questions are as follows:

In the calendar year 2024, 5995 valid Freedom of Information requests were submitted to the Scottish Government.

Within that period, the requestor with the most requests submitted 527 requests.

The Scottish Government does not have the information requested in your third question. This is because there is no business requirement for officials to keep records of the time spent processing FOI requests. These tasks are completed by Scottish Government officials as part of their normal duties along with other tasks appropriate to their role as a civil servant.

This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not hold the information you have requested.

Our notice that we do not hold the requested information on costs notwithstanding, you may be interested to note the information contained in an information request handling report which gives more detail on the subject of the costs of responding to FOI requests. That report can be viewed through the following link:

Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - information request handling: annual report 2019 - 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 https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.