· FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Future of Flood Risk Management in Scotland: EIR release
Information requested
The 'Regulatory Impact Assessment of Proposals for Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Bill' published on 3 September 2008 advises at Section 3, 3.4 and 3.5 that a consultation document was released in 2007 and had a response from 145 organisations.
I have been unable to locate these on your website and I would therefore be grateful if you would either, provide me with copies of the document and responses received or advise me of where it can be accessed on your website as I may well be looking in the wrong area.
Response
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.
We supplied you with details on where to find the consultation document on 15 May 2018, I now enclose copies of the responses to the consultation that we hold.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested.
Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained below.
Reasons for not providing information
The Scottish Government does not have the information.
Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have copies of all of the responses that were submitted to the consultation.
Detected exemption language
FOI reference: FOI/18/01339Date received: 7 November 2017Date responded: 19 April 2018 Information requested The 'Regulatory Impact Assessment of Proposals for Flood Risk Management (Scotland) Bill' published on 3 September 2008 advises at Section 3, 3.4 and 3.5 that a consultation document was released in 2007 and had a response from 145 organisations. 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.