International offices running costs, staffing and pay bands: FOI release

Information requested

Information regarding the Scottish Government’s International Offices in Beijing, Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, London, Ottawa, Paris and Washington DC. Including:

• A breakdown of the yearly total spend on each of these offices, including office maintenance, expenditure on events and travel and salaries
• A breakdown of the number of staff on each Scottish Government pay band in each of these international offices.

Response

Most of the information you have requested is available from Scottish Government international offices: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot). Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

You asked for the number of staff on each Scottish Government pay band in each of these offices and while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide a small amount of the information you have requested because an exemption under section 38(1)(b) (personal information) of FOISA applies to that information. This is because it is personal data of a third party, specifically the salaries 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.

This exemption is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

I can however confirm the combined staff pay grades in all offices listed in your request. The combined totals are 1 x Director, 2 x Deputy Director, 32 x A-C Band and 17 x Country Based Staff and the ranges for these pay grades can be found within FOI/202200295836 Pay grades within Scottish Government: FOI release - gov.scot (www.gov.scot).

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.