Student Awards Agency Scotland student support regulations and ministerial guidance: FOI Review

Information requested

Original Request 202500480810

1) Eligibility rules, guidance and terminology

1.1 Current eligibility policies and any post-2019 change logs covering residency/immigration categories and evidence requirements, including ministerial guidance relied upon.

1.2 Any internal guidance/training issued to staff addressing the Equality Act definition of “sex”, associated terminology in communications, and safeguarding/freedom-of-belief requirements.

1.3 Equality impact assessments or legal/risk assessments conducted for the above.

2) Data sharing and information governance

2.1 Current data-sharing agreements/MOUs with the Home Office, HMRC, DWP and the Student Loans Company, including change logs.

2.2 DPIAs and Records of Processing Activities (ROPA) covering those data flows (you may redact security details).

2.3 A high-level field list/schema and the stated lawful bases (UK GDPR/DPA 2018) for each flow.

2.4 Any issue logs or risk assessments concerning accuracy, eligibility verification and prevention of ineligible access to public funds.

3) Fraud, error, recoveries (aggregated)

3.1 Annual totals (or nearest available aggregation) for detected/flagged ineligibility, investigations opened, decisions upheld/overturned on appeal, and amounts recovered or written off. Summaries/extracts are fine if full reports exceed cost.

4) EDI procurement and conditionality

4.1 A list of third-party EDI providers or memberships engaged by SAAS since 2019 (supplier/name, contract or scheme title, start/end dates, total value, brief description).

4.2 Any department-level requirements or model clauses mandating participation in specific EDI schemes/training for grants, contracts or HR policy (where held).

5) Complaints and legal advice (aggregated/meta)

5.1 Annual counts of complaints/queries received about: (a) use of sex-related terminology in SAAS materials; (b) compelled-belief or ideological content in training/communications; (c) eligibility decisions linked to residency/immigration status.

5.2 If legal advice is held on the above topics, and content is withheld under FOISA s36(1), please disclose the title, date, author/owner and a non privileged summary.

6) Post-UKSC decision-making.

Response

Thank you for your correspondence, dated 11 September 2025, requesting a review of the handling of your recent Freedom of Information request. This letter is supplemented with a number of annexes which are attached separately.

Both the wording of your initial request, and the subsequent review, are listed in Annex 1 for completeness.

As per my acknowledgement letter to you, dated 26 September 2025, I examined the case afresh to establish (a) whether the original response should be confirmed, with or without modifications as appropriate, or a fresh decision should be substituted. I also reviewed if (b) your request was handled in accordance with our procedures and legislative requirements.

I have laid out this correspondence in a way which will give you my overall decision on your request for review, as well as outlining how I have undertaken the review. This helps me to give you assurance that I am discharging my functions under FOISA s.15, which is a duty to provide advice and assistance.

I have also included an annex to this letter (Annex 2) which breaks down each part of your request, alongside my assessment of whether it was handled in full or not; whether it was handled in line with legislation; and provided any additional information to meet your initial request. This annex also draws out where there are new requests which need to be actioned appropriately. For those requests, I have now passed them onto the SAAS Information Management Team as of 30 September 2025.

1. Review Process

To address your queries, I have looked at your original request, as well as the information you have subsequently outlined in your review request.

In terms of my actions in conducting this review, I have examined the entire case file, including the original request that was sent around to key business contacts within SAAS, as well as all the subsequent replies generated from the SAAS teams.

I have also asked the original responders from within SAAS to share with me their search templates and associated search strings / criteria, as well as asking them to complete a brand-new search with the parameters in your request.

I have then also examined what FOISA exemptions were applied and asked the responders to explain their rationale. In reviewing the initial response to you, I have also looked at the guidance for each exemption applied, as well as considering the public interest test.

To assist you to understand how I have reached my decisions, it is important to note that you did not previously specify that you were looking for information specifically pertaining to post-UKSC ruling, as you stated that was for context only. Therefore, SAAS provided you with the information which matched your initial written requests for information held from 01 January 2019.

2. Request for FOI Review - Decision

(a) Original Request – Review of Content

As you can see from Annex 2, I have established several findings, based on a line by line-by-line review of your original request:

QUESTION SECTION	OUTCOME
Question 1: Eligibility rules, guidance and terminology	Original response is confirmed, with modifications. Additional information is available to cover all parts of your request. This is captured in Annex 2.
Question 2: Data sharing and information governance	Parts (a) and (b) Original response is confirmed, with modifications Additional information is available to cover all parts of your request. However, a further FOISA exemption has been included for completeness, with additional commentary, including the public interest test. This is captured in Annex 2. Part (c) Original response is confirmed, without modification. Part (d) Fresh decision / information to be substituted. Upon review it was assessed that the answer did not fully meet your initial request, and historical information has been found on extensive search.
Question 3: Fraud, error, recoveries (aggregated)	Original response is confirmed, with modifications. Additional information is available to cover parts of your request. This is captured in Annex 2.
Question 4: EDI procurement and conditionality	Original response is confirmed, with modifications. Upon review it was assessed that the answer did not fully meet your initial request, although there are aspects of your request where SAAS does not hold the information requested, and a FOISA exemption has been applied to those aspects.
Question 5: Complaints and legal advice (aggregated/meta)	Part (a) Original response is confirmed, without modification. Part (b) Original response is confirmed, with modifications. Additional information is available to cover all parts of your request. This is captured in Annex 2.
Question 6: Post-UKSC decision- making	Original response is confirmed, with modifications. The exemption applied under FOISA legislation was relevant, but the further explanation has now been provided. In addition, a further FOISA exemption has been included for completeness, with additional commentary.

(b) Handling of Initial Request

Regarding whether SAAS handled your initial FOI request in accordance with both SAAS procedures and legislative requirements, based on my review I believe that this was broadly the case. The reason why it may not have met all your information requirements in the first instance is due to interpretation of the original ask.

There is every best intention to meet every FOI in conjunction with legislation, albeit this review has highlighted some learning points with which we can improve our internal practices.

All search records are held centrally within the ERDM system, which is Scottish Government’s electronic filing system. All searches were then reviewed to ensure that all relevant information was disclosed. Where information was not available, or could not be disclosed, we ensured that the relevant FOISA exemption was listed.

SAAS works on the presumption of releasing all information where possible, explaining where information is not held or where exemptions apply. However, to assist you to understand why we applied various exemptions, we acknowledge that there could have been more explanation attached to each one. This is a learning point which will be taken on board in relation to future requests received. In Annex 2, I have inserted additional commentary where appropriate to explain exemptions and public interest tests.

However, in responding to the wording of your request for review, you appear to have asked for additional information which was not previously requested. Therefore, I have passed these requests back onto the SAAS Information Management Team for action. These will go through the standard FOI process, and you will have now received correspondence and a new reference number. That response may or may not cross reference my findings in this review, given that the timescales may overlap.

Finally, to assist with further requests, and as part of our duty to provide advice and assistance, it may be helpful to draw out the legal status of SAAS. We are an Executive Agency of Scottish Government. This means we only implement policies as directed by Scottish Ministers. Any associated impact assessments are carried out by the Scottish Government Policy leads and held directly by them. Where you have alleged that it is not possible for SAAS not to hold such information i.e. discussions at a Board or Executive team level, then this is because it is not for us to have done so.

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.

FOI 202500484523 - Information released - Annex 1 - 4

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