Documents regarding accuracy of public statements concerning hospital waiting times: FOI release

Information requested

Please provide all information held by your authority relating to the accuracy, verification, or internal assessment of the following public statements made by your organisation regarding waiting times in hospitals in Scotland? This request includes, but is not limited to, internal emails, briefings, reports, meeting notes, correspondence, and any records referring to concerns, discrepancies, corrections, or discussions about whether the statements were inaccurate, misleading, or incomplete. If any information is withheld, please specify the exemption(s) relied upon and explain why they apply. Where possible, please provide redacted versions of withheld material. If clarification is required, or if this request risks exceeding cost limits, please contact me so that I may refine it.

To clarify, my request relates to any public statements made by your organisation concerning waiting times in hospitals in Scotland. This includes, but is not limited to, statements published in press releases, official reports, website updates, social media communications, public briefings, or responses to parliamentary or media enquiries. Specifically, I am seeking any information held by your authority regarding the accuracy, verification processes, supporting data, or internal assessments underpinning such statements. If it would assist in narrowing the scope, I am happy to limit the request to statements made within a particular timeframe (for example, the last 12 months). Please let me know if this would be helpful.

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. Searches had been narrowed to the period between February 2025 and February 2026 as requested. However, to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. 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.

The data used in public statements is published statistics from Public Health Scotland (PHS) and information relating to data quality is available on the PHS website along with the published statistics. Public Health Scotland

You may, however, wish to consider reducing the scope of your request in order that the costs can be brought below £600. For example, you could specify a particular set of published statistics or public statements you are interested in or restrict your request to a much shorter timeframe, as this would allow us to limit the searches that would require to be conducted. 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.

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.