Wildfire summit attendee list, briefing and minutes: EIR release

Information requested

(1) An attendee list of those who attended the Scottish Government’s wildfire summit.

(2) A copy of any briefing provided to members of the Scottish Government in advance of the wildfire summit.

(3) Any minutes taken during the summit.

Response

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.

Request for information relating to the Wildfire Summit that took place on 14 October 2025

Questions 1 and 3

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance an exception under Regulation 10(4)(d) (material in the course of completion) applies to the information requested. It may help if I explain that the minutes and final list of attendees for the 14 October 2025 Wildfire Summit are still to be finalised, therefore we are unable to provide these at present.

I would note, however, that an invitation list for the summit is included in the briefing pack provided in our response for Question 2 (and can be found in Annex B). You may wish to review Annex A of the briefing pack for a breakdown of said invitees and their respective organisations.

This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking into account 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 a public interest in disclosing information as part of an open, transparent and accountable government. However, there is a greater public interest in allowing a private space for officials to consider draft content of documents to ensure that factual and accurate information is released into the public domain.

As we have applied Regulation 10(4)(d), under Regulation 13(d) a public authority must also outline when the information will be completed. The minutes (and list of attendees) of the summit have not been finalised yet as noted above, however, we are currently expecting these to be available in November 2025. You may wish to submit a further request after this point if you are still seeking to obtain these.

Question 2

I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex A.

On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. A small amount of information has been withheld from the document provided under Regulation 11(2) – Personal Data as it contains personal information and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and in Section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’.

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 202500489106 - Information released - Annex A and B

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