Scottish Government involvement in the Offshore Valuation Group: FOI release

Information requested

1. How much funding did the Scottish Government contribute to the Offshore Valuation Group?
2. Please provide all internal Scottish Government discussion/analysis of the report of the Offshore Valuation Group. This search should be restricted to dates between 19th May 2010 and 31st December 2013.

Response

With regards to part (1.) of your request, the answer to your question is that the Scottish Government contributed £10,000 to the Offshore Valuation Group.

Regarding Part (2) of your request, 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.

The reason for this is that to locate and retrieve that information we would need to conduct a search of all of the records of the Scottish Government. It may help if I explain that we file our information according to the subject matter, not by reference to the names of individuals/organisations with whom we have corresponded. 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.

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 the subject matter(s) of you are interested in or restrict your request to a specific business area of the Scottish Government, 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 http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.