Late Freedom of Information responses that were delayed by Special Advisers: FOI release

Information requested

Of the FOIs that have been returned late in the last six months, how many have been delayed by Special Advisers?

Can you provide the communication from Special Advisers requesting delays for each of these case?

On the 27/02/26 we sent a request for clarification to you asking:

Of the FOI responses that have been returned late in the last 6 months, how many have Special Advisers actually delayed the progress;

or

Of the FOI responses that have been returned late in the last 6 months, how many were SpecialAdvisers involved in.

As I am unable to continue without this, I will put your request on hold until I hear back from you.

You responded on the 02/03/26 to confirm:

My definition of delayed would be the former, so ‘of the FOI responses that have been returned late in the last 6 months, how many have Special Advisers actually delayed the progress.’

I have interpreted your request to be for the number of times in the last 6 months that a response to a request made under either FOISA or the Environmental Information Regulations (the EIRs) has been delayed due to a request from Special Advisers or the Private Office for Special Advisers to delay said requests.

For context and outside of your request for information I have included the following information that may be of interest to you.

Requests under FOISA/the EIRs are graded as either Routine or Sensitive. The Criteria for Decision making (available at govscot:document) details that all requests under either FOISA/the EIRs should be regarded as Routine unless objectively assessed as sensitive or exceptionally complex. Sensitive cases could be those considered to raise matters of highly significant public interest (such as new areas of policy development or major set piece events). Exceptionally complex cases could be those likely to include complex arguments or legal points that have not been previously considered.

The grading of an request under FOISA/the EIRs is fluid and cases initially graded as Sensitive may be changed to Routine (and vice versa) during the course of being considered and answered.

Only cases that are graded as Sensitive are sent to Special Advisers for comment and then on to Scottish Government Ministers for decision.

Response

A search of our systems found that there were 55 requests under FOISA/the EIRs that were graded as Sensitive and are recorded as having gone late beyond the deadline during the period in question.

A search of all of the case files for these requests did not find any instances where either Special Advisers or the Private Office for Special Advisers made requests for a response to any of these requests to be delayed.

This is a formal notification under s.17(1) of FOISA that the information you have requested is not held by the Scottish Government.

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.