Ministerial correspondence with Salmon Scotland Chief Executive: EIR Review
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004
Information requested
Original Request - 202500471588
Written correspondence including (but not limited to) letters, emails, texts and WhatsApp messages, on any subject, from or to Salmon Scotland Chief Executive Tavish Scott, from or to the First Minister, Scottish Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers, Scottish Government Special Advisers, From 1 January 2024 to 18 June 2025.
Response
I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for:
Written correspondence including (but not limited to) letters, emails, texts and WhatsApp messages, on any subject, from or to Salmon Scotland Chief Executive Tavish Scott, from or to the First Minister, Scottish Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers, Scottish Government Special Advisers, From 1 January 2024 to 18 June 2025.
The original EIR case number was 202500471588.
I have concluded that the original decision should be modified. Your review request indicated that you thought that more information in scope of your request is held. Whilst 22 documents were released in response to your original request, I have conducted additional searches that returned more correspondence. I have also identified an attachment that was missing from the original correspondence supplied, so I am now withdrawing reliance on the exception at 10(4)(a) (information not held). This was applied in error in the initial response as we do hold information within the scope of your request, and have provided that to you where possible. This document is now included as Document 20 at Annex A and Annex B.
Following the fresh searches, I located a further 19 items in scope of your original request that were omitted from the original response issued. These documents were located through further extensive searches of the available record management systems. As such I am releasing a total of 20 additional items to you as part of my review. Please see the list of additional documents being released in Annex A and a zip file containing the 20 PDF documents at Annex B.
While we aim to provide information where possible, we have redacted personal information, i.e. the names and contact details of junior officials, from that disclosed to you in Annex A.
An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to that information because it is personal data of a third party 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 exception 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 exception.
We apologise that your original request was not handled to the expected standard and feedback will be provided to the original case handler to ensure that future cases are handled appropriately.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG