City of Edinburgh Council correspondence regarding the proposed new West Edinburgh secondary school: EIR release
- Published
- 4 February 2026
- FOI reference
- EIR/202500491517
- Date received
- 31 October 2025
- Date responded
- 24 November 2025
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
All correspondence between the Scottish Government and The City of Edinburgh Council regarding the proposed new West Edinburgh secondary school, and in particular any requests from CEC to ask for funding for this school and any responses from Scot Gov.
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.
I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested within an Annex to this letter and as separate attachments (detailed within the Response Annex).
Some of the information you have requested is available from the Publications section of the Scottish Government website and from the Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA) website.
Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the websites listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception 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 exception.
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.
- File type
- File size
- 9.9 MB
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG