Information regarding filming activity on Scottish Government premises: FOI release

Information requested

Information on any filming activity your organisation has facilitated, hosted, supported, approved, or otherwise been directly involved in on your premises or in your area. This includes activity where a fee was charged as well as activity where no fee was charged, but where the organisation was aware of and involved in enabling the filming to take place. I am not asking for estimates of all filming that may have occurred in your area. I am only requesting information relating to productions for which your organisation itself has records due to its direct involvement.

For each of the last six years, please provide the following, broken down by year:

1. The number of film or television productions your organisation facilitated or was involved in.

2. The total number of filming days associated with those productions.

If possible, please count filming days in the same way film offices commonly do (for example, treating one production on one day as one filming day). Example here https://liverpoolfilmoffice.tv/home/liverpool-film-office-kickstarts-35th-anniversary-celebrations with-busiest-year-to-date/

If your organisation does not hold this information in the requested format, I would be grateful if you could provide it in the closest available form and briefly note any limitations in the data.

Response

I am responding to your requests on behalf of the core Scottish Government, including the Chief Medical Officer’s business area that sits within the SG.

Noting the types of production featured in the example article you linked to on the Liverpool Film Office website, I should make clear that the Scottish Government does not directly fund filming activity for film or television productions – and I have included below a suggested source of such information for Scotland.

Nonetheless, we have also considered the terms of your request broadly. We do hold some information on filming that has been facilitated through the Scottish Government’s central Communications Division by News (press office) and Marketing teams, though given the nature of this we do not hold information on the duration of filming. I hope the following information is useful.

1. The following provides the number of pre-arranged filmed interviews that News teams have facilitated, the vast majority for TV news programmes, in each financial year indicated. These are interviews that had been requested and set-up in advance with individual journalists; they do not include ‘clips’ provided to one or more TV news reporters attending media opportunities, such as open ministerial visits/’photo ops’ etc as we do not retain a record of these. Please note, we hold information in scope only from 2021-22, while the data for 2025-26 runs up to the end of January so represents 10 months of the current financial year.

	20-21	21-22	22-23	23-24	24-25	25- Jan 26 inclusive
Pre-arranged interviews facilitated by SG News teams	N/A	401	353	303	286	178

The following provides the number of TV productions (broadcast only) facilitated through external advertising agencies via the Marketing Services Framework for SG-funded marketing campaigns over the last six financial years.

	20-21	21-22	22-23	23-24	24-25	25-26
Comms: Marketing	37	38	11	6	6	10

As noted above, the Scottish Government does not directly support filming activity for film productions, nor for television productions of the kind mentioned in the LFO example.

Screen Scotland is the Scottish Government's public body for screen, who receive funding from the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. Screen Scotland drive development of all aspects of our film and television industry through funding and strategic support. This includes funding film and television productions.

In this instance, you may wish to seek further information from Screen Scotland through their contact form on the Creative Scotland website, or through enquiries@creativescotland.com for more information on the productions they have supported.

2. As indicated above, the Scottish Government does not hold this information.

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.