Scottish Government 'A Fresh Start with Independence' publication costs and access statistics: FOI release

Information requested

How many times has the publication 'A Fresh Start with Independence' been downloaded since it's launch.
You asked if this could be broken down:

• by day
• country from which is was accessed

You also asked if we could provide the overall costs involved in producing the document, including any printing and design costs, or use of external agencies.

Response

For context, publications on gov.scot exist as both PDFs and multi-page HTML documents. To provide the most accurate figures possible, we have interpreted 'number of downloads' as the number of users who accessed the papers by viewing the HTML pages or downloading the PDFs. "Unique users" refers to the total number of unique individuals who visited the reported pages of the website during the time and period analysed.

Note: website analytics data is not 100% accurate for a number of reasons, including where users have opted out or blocked tracking. Gov.scot implemented new cookie banner settings as of the start of September 2024. Previously all users were opted-in to analytics tracking by default (and could opt out); now the default is that all users must choose if they want to opt in or not. This caused a drop in traffic available in the dashboard which has been calculated to be 39% of the total site usage.

As of 9 November 2025:
The number of unique visitors that have visited "A Fresh Start with Independence" since 8 October 2025 is 4,745.

Breakdown by day
Note that total figures are slightly greater due to the website analytics tool counting users who are on the site across the date threshold from one day to the next against both dates.

8 October - 1371
9 October - 702
10 October - 261
11 October - 183
12 October - 75
13 October - 99
14 October - 127
15 October - 164
16 October - 148
17 October - 60
18 October - 37
19 October - 28
20 October - 224
21 October - 142
22 October - 143
23 October - 97
24 October - 93
25 October - 71
26 October - 63
27 October - 103
28 October - 104
29 October - 112
30 October - 173
31 October - 94
1 November - 83
2 November - 105
3 November - 89
4 November - 111
5 November - 73
6 November - 76
7 November - 58
8 November - 55
9 November - 46

Breakdown by country for all countries with visits from more than 10 users
Note that these figures are also correct as of 9 November 2025.

United Kingdom - 3934
United States - 166
Germany - 81
Spain - 70
Ireland - 39
France - 36
Australia - 30
Canada - 30
India - 30
Netherlands - 29
Italy - 23
Poland - 18
Belgium - 13
Sweden - 13
Brazil - 12
New Zealand - 12
Norway - 12
Greece - 11

In regards to your request for the costs of the production of A Fresh Start with Independence, an exemption under S.27(1) - (information intended for future publication) applies to details of the publication costs for this paper. This reason this exemption applies is because we intend to publish this information within 12 weeks of the date of your request. We consider that it is reasonable to withhold the information until that date, rather than release this information before the planned publication date.

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. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because of the interest in an open and transparent government, and this will be met by our planned publication. In the meantime, there is a greater public interest in taking the time necessary to ensure the information has been properly collated and checked before it is published as planned. Also, we see no public interest in disrupting our programme of work to release the information ahead of the intended publication date.

It is also not possible to provide details of some of the other production costs of this paper because this relates to work which was taken forward by civil servants as part of their normal duties supporting the Scottish Government and in line with usual practice, details of individual tasks carried out by civil servants, including the number of hours spent on them, are not routinely recorded as there is no business need to do this. This is a formal notice under S.17(1) of FOISA that the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.

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.