Islands Business Resilience Fund (IBRF) information: EIR Review

Information requested

Original request 202500474768

1. Please send us a copy of the Highlands & Islands Enterprise “detailed analysis of information and statistics provided by Transport Scotland and CalMac relating to ferry disruption.”

2. If not included above, please also send us the information and statistics given to HIE by CalMac and Transport Scotland.

Response

I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA). I have concluded that a different decision should be substituted.

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

We should have identified before that this was a request for environmental information and handled it under this regime at request stage, and I apologise on behalf of the Scottish Government for this oversight.

Information previously withheld under s30(c) of FOISA is now withheld under regulation 10(4)(e)(internal communications) of the EIR. Personal information redacted from the original response is now withheld under regulation 11(2) of EIR. This does not materially change the information that was originally released.

However, I have also concluded that two documents were wrongly withheld and should have been released, subject to appropriate redaction, as they fall within the scope of your query. The documents are attached.

The Islands Communities Impact Assessment was withheld making use of the exemption under section 27(1) of FOISA as it was intended for publication. You may wish to note that this document has now been published and withholding it is no longer justified. The document can be found here.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/islands-business-resilience-fund-island-communities-impactassessment/documents/

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exemptions under regulation 10(4)(e)(internal communications) of the EIR. This exception is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release in the interest of full disclosure under EIR. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that policy formulation can take place in confidence.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested 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.

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.

EIR 202500482541 - Information released - Documents

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PDF

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154.6 kB