Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy meetings with energy companies: EIR release

Information requested

1. Since 1 April 2025 to 12 November 2025, on how many occasions have the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy or her officials met with SSEN, Scottish Power, or any other company involved in the transmission or distribution of electricity in Scotland (please specify).

2. Please provide any minutes from these meetings.

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.

Response to your request

For point 1 of your request, I can advise that the number of meetings we have identified between companies involved in transmission and distribution and the Scottish Government is 86.
That this number includes:

• 1 meeting between the Cabinet Secretary and transmission and distribution operators
• 17 meetings between Scottish Government officials in the Directorate for Energy and Climate Change and transmission and distribution operators
• 57 meetings between the Energy Consents Unit (ECU) and the transmission and distribution operators. These meetings are used to provide updates on applications;
• 6 meeting between other Scottish Government directorates and transmission and distribution operators, and
• 5 meetings where both the Scottish Government and Transmission Operators were both the invited guest of another organisation.

For point 2, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Please find attached Annex A which contains the information that we are able to provide in response to your request.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because:

• An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information.
• An exception under regulation 10(4)(a) (information not held) applies to some of the information.
• An exception under Regulation 10(4)(e), internal communication, has been applied to some of the information requested.
• An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) (confidentiality of commercial information) applies to some of the information.

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.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(a) (information not held) applies to some of the information requested. This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception.

An exception under Regulation 10(4)(e), internal communication, has been applied to some of the information requested. This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception.

An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) (confidentiality of commercial information) applies to some of the information requested. This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception.

Additionally, some of the information you seek may already be available on the Scottish Government’s website, where formal meeting minutes are published: The Scottish Government - gov.scot.

You may also find it helpful to refer to a response we provided to a previous EIR request: Information from meetings between Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Energy and various companies: EIR release - gov.scot

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 202500493395 - Information Released - Annex A

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