Correspondence between Ministers regarding grooming gangs: FOI release

Information requested

Any emails, letters, or other written correspondence sent by members of the public (constituents or non-constituents) to the current and former First Ministers, and Audrey Nicholl MSP, between 1 January 2014 and 20 November 2025 that contain one of more of several phrases.

Response

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the costs of locating, retrieving and providing the information requested would exceed the upper cost limit of £600 due to the number of documents found. 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, this could include reducing the time frame to a shorter, more specific period, limiting the correspondence to one Minister or a smaller group, refining the list of search terms to focus the request on those that are more specific, rather than broad terms such as 'taxis' or 'child abuse', and breaking down the search terms and/or time frames over a number of separate requets.

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: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourRights/Tipsforrequesters.aspx.

Even though the request has exceeded the upper cost limit, I have enclosed a copy of a sample of ten pieces of correspondence in line with part (4) 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 exemption(s) under section s.38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names and contact details of individuals, 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.

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.

FOI 202500495038 - Information released - Annex

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PDF

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4.0 MB