Plans put on hold or cancelled by the Scottish Government since April 2025: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide a list of plans put on hold or cancelled by the Scottish Government since April 2025. Consider the cancelled £75,000 research into boosting trade with US states as an example of this.

Please list the plans put on hold and cancelled and their cost.

Response

In relation to your request, I can confirm that the research into boosting trade with US States was originally cancelled in 2024 due to budget constraints. However, this project was re-launched in 2025 and the Scottish Government has completed procurement, with a successful bidder awarded.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested “on all plans put on hold or cancelled by the Scottish Government since April 2025”, would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. This is because the request would require a full trawl of all of the Scottish Governments Directorates and Business Areas to ask for a list of cancelled plans. Furthermore, there is no standard area for projects or an overarching list of them, so we would be required to contact all areas to obtain confirmation of their projects and what is held, which would take a considerable amount of time and resources.

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. 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.

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 type of plans you are interested in, eg. projects, or specify the subject matter(s) of the plans you are interested in or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the search parameters and scope. Should you wish to consider how many plans have been cancelled in a certain division or policy area, a separate FOI request could be made to provide this, which would act to refine the ask, to say a set business area. A list of Scottish Government Directorates can be found here - https://www.gov.scot/about/how-government-is-run/directorates/

You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner's 'Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs' on his website at: https://www.foi.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.