EIR/202500462456 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Scottish Government Employees within Energy Consents Unit: EIR release
Information requested
1. In each year since 2007-08, or as far back as data goes, how many individuals were employed within the Energy Consents Unit.
2. In each year since 2007-08, or as far back as data goes, how much funding has been allocated to the Energy Consents Unit.
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.
In response to point 1 of your request, please find the requested information attached, named ‘Annex A’. This information has been extracted from centrally held Quarterly Public Sector Survey (QPSES) data sets. However, please note that for years prior to 2017, branch titles suggest that these reporting lines may also capture staff undertaking work beyond that of the Energy Consents Unit.
Regarding point 2 of your request, the Energy Consents Unit has no funding budget specifically allocated. Instead, the ECU operates on a cost-recovery basis, aiming to break even by offsetting its expenditures and staff costs with income collected from application fees and related charges. For more information regarding application fees, you may with to refer to “The Electricity (Applications for Consent and Variation of Consent) (Fees) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2022” (link below):
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2022/310/made
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.