Reporting Discrepancy and Grant Claim Submissions by Advice Direct Scotland: FOI release

Information requested

1. Please provide the specific sections or wording from the Advice Direct Scotland (ADS) grant agreement, schedules, or any guidance notes that define “eligible outputs” and “contacts” for the purpose of grant reporting and claims.

2. For clarity, can you confirm whether the contact volumes reported by ADS and used for grant claims should or should not include:

• Out-of-scope callers (e.g. non-Scotland),
• Repeat contacts,
• Missed or abandoned calls,
• Or whether only completed contacts/cases are to be treated as eligible outputs.

3. With respect to the spreadsheets you released on 23 September 2025, could you please confirm naming conventions and sequence, namely:

• The “original submission” received prior to 14 January 2025 (covering Q1–Q3 2024/25): This had higher output figures.
• The version associated with ADS’s 14 January 2025 correspondence to SG: This held lower service output figures that in turn triggered SG's clarification ask to ADS

• The “corrected submission” attached to ADS’s 16 January 2025 correspondence to SG (reverted back to the higher service output volumes and claimed it was an oversight by Finance)?

4. Regarding the spreadsheets released on 23 September 2025, kindly confirm the filenames for documents ‘FOR RELEASE – Q2 Spreadsheet.xlsx’ and ‘FOR RELEASE – Q3 Spreadsheet.xlsx’ submitted by ADS (before being renamed by SG).

Response

I enclose a copy of the information you requested, and the answers to your questions, in the electronic format you asked for at Annexes A and B of this letter.

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FOI 202500486783 - Information Released - Annex A and B

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