Written off payment information: FOI release

Information requested

For years 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25:

1. The number of cases in which fraud-related, irregular, or unauthorised payments were identified and subsequently written off by the Scottish Government or any of its agencies.

2. The total monetary value of these write-offs in each year.

3. Where available, a brief description or categorisation of the types of payments written off (e.g. payroll error, grant fraud, procurement irregularity, etc.).

If this information is recorded separately by agency or department, please provide a breakdown by body.

Response

Some of the information requested can be found in the Annual Accounts. Specifically, identified fraud by category, is disclosed in the Governance Statement and any general write offs would be included in the broader Annual Accounts figures provided around losses. Both of these are already publicly available from the Annual Accounts for the years 2019-20, 2020-21, 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 at the following section of the Scottish Government website, Financial reports and accounts - Government finance - gov.scot. Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we are not required to provide you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The Scottish Government has a zero tolerance on fraud and pursue a full recovery approach to any fraud identified. As a result, Scottish Government does not automatically write off losses from fraud. The central collation of identified fraud does not specifically include information about cases that may have ultimately resulted in write offs. Further, central collations of losses does not identify those losses that have specifically related to fraud. Lastly, Scottish Government does not centrally hold information about individual agency fraud related write-offs.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the specific fraud related write off information requested between the years 2019-20 to 2024-25, would exceed the upper cost limit of £600. The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct an extensive search across the Scottish Government and relevant agencies to determine if any of their fraud cases resulted in a write off between 2019-2020 to 2024-25. 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 by Regulations made under section 12. 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 request this information over separate years or restrict your request to a specific agency or business area of the Scottish Government, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. 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/how-do-i-ask

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.