FOI/202300347257 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Correspondence between Scottish Government and Circularity Scotland from March 2021: EIR release
Information requested
Please provide all correspondence between the Circular Economy Minister and her special advisers/private office and the chief executive and chairman of Circularity Scotland from March 2021 to today’s date. Please also provide any briefing notes provided to the Circular Economy Minister for meetings with the chairman or chief executive over the same period, and any minutes of the meetings.
Response
I apologise for the delay in responding to your request for information. The delay has arisen as a result in the number of requests in relation to the Deposit Return Scheme. We are taking steps to ensure EIR requests are processed timeously in future, and apologise for the inconvenience on this occasion. As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the Purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.
I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B. On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in Annex A.
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.
Detected exemption language
We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes.