FOI/202300390133 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Capital funding commitment to Stranraer: EIR release
Information requested
All correspondence and minutes between the Scottish Government and Dumfries and Galloway Council relating to the £6 million capital funding commitment to Stranraer.
You also noted the following in your request: It is my understanding that officials from the local authority met with Scottish Government regeneration officials on 14 November, 2023, to confirm the monetary commitment still stands and how it could be accessed.
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.
I enclose a copy of the information you have requested. We can confirm that a Teams call took place between officials from Dumfries and Galloway Council and Scottish Government on 14 November 2023, the correspondence relating to this call is included with the response. As the call took place at official level, as part of ongoing routine business and stakeholder engagement, with no decisions taken or specific actions agreed a formal note of the meeting was not taken. We have also included correspondence relating to a call held between officials in the Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Government held on 31 August 2016, and have included a briefing submission to the then Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Jobs and Fair Work which records the outcome of this meeting.
Some of the information you have requested was published in a previous EIR release available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202100217701/. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
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.