EIR/202600515124 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Information regarding decision to delay Heat in Buildings Bill: EIR release
Information requested
The written note and explanation by government ministers/civil servants about the decision to delay the heat and buildings bill, and all information provided to support the decision.
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 have interpreted your response as relating to material concerning the most recent delay to the Bill in November 2025. I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested. During our review of the material within the scope of your request, we identified a number of documents which were duplicates of information already held elsewhere within the release. Where information appears more than once, it has been included only once in this release.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exceptions under regulations 10(4)(d) (material in the course of completion), 10(4)(e) (internal communications) and 11(2) (applicant has asked for personal data of a third party) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why that exceptions applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.
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.
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.