Transport Scotland - Internal electric vehicle (EV) charging policy work and assessments: EIR Review

Information requested

Original request 202600503245

Please provide all internal reports, briefing papers, draft documents, assessments, presentations, or policy papers relating to:

• On‑street EV charging
• Residential charging access for households without driveways
• Cable gullies or cross‑pavement charging solutions
• Any internal analysis of barriers to on‑street charging deployment

Please include documents created, received, or circulated between 1 January 2020 and the present.

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.

As part of the internal review, I examined the search processes used when responding to your request. During this review, I identified a technical issue with the search tool. Although officials applied speech marks in line with internal guidance, the software did not recognise the specific style of quotation marks used. As a result, the system treated the query as if no speech marks had been applied, generating a significantly broader search than intended.

I discussed this matter with colleagues in the Data and Governance team, who confirmed that the issue arose from a software limitation. Updated internal guidance will now be issued to ensure the FOI team is aware of this limitation and to prevent the issue from recurring.

This technical error had a direct impact on the original handling of your request. The breadth of the unintentionally expanded search contributed to the application of Regulation 10(4)(b) (manifestly unreasonable). Once the correct search parameters were applied, I reassessed the case and concluded that Regulation 10(4)(b) should not have been relied upon.

The results returned from the correctly executed search have now been shared with you in the format you asked for. This response now supersedes our previous response provided on 4 February 2026.

I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and appreciate you’re understanding as we take steps to improve our processes.

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 202600503245 - Information released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

3.5 MB