Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 5

8 Novem­ber 2024

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For Inform­a­tion

Title: Inform­a­tion requests and com­plaints update

Pre­pared by: Paul Dav­is­on, Inform­a­tion Manager

Pur­pose

This paper provides an update on the num­ber of inform­a­tion requests, and key per­form­ance meas­ures in meet­ing them, under Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Act (FOISA)/ Envir­on­ment­al Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions (EIR) and Data pro­tec­tion arrange­ments since Septem­ber 2023, and focus­ing on fin­an­cial years ²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁴⁄₂₅ (Q1 & 2).

The paper also describes num­bers and out­comes of form­al com­plaints to the Park Authority.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit and Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Note activ­ity in this area and Park Author­ity per­form­ance b) Com­ment on breadth and depth of report­ing for future updates

Activ­ity

Free­dom of Information

1. As a pub­lic body, CNPA is sub­ject to stat­utory require­ments under the Free­dom of Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Act (FOISA) and also the Envir­on­ment­al Inform­a­tion (Scot­land) Reg­u­la­tions (EIR). This paper provides an update on the num­ber of inform­a­tion requests under these pro­vi­sions received in the last three fin­an­cial years and the first two quar­ters of ²⁴⁄₂₅, and per­form­ance in key meas­ures. Pre­vi­ous years inform­a­tion is provided for bench­mark­ing pur­poses. All fig­ures relate to the time peri­od in which the request was first received.

2. In hand­ling inform­a­tion requests, it is for the Park Author­ity to determ­ine wheth­er a request should be dealt with under the pro­vi­sions of either FOISA or EIR, or a sub­ject access request fall­ing sep­ar­ately under the pro­vi­sions of data pro­tec­tion legis­la­tion. Hand­ling of inform­a­tion requests under FOISA and EIR var­ies slightly in terms of poten­tial exemp­tions for release of inform­a­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion of the wider pub­lic interest in decid­ing wheth­er to release or with­hold inform­a­tion. The clas­si­fic­a­tion of an inform­a­tion request could itself be a point of chal­lenge by a requester and will be tested by the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er should a mat­ter be referred to the Commission.

3. Total request num­bers in ²³⁄₂₄ rose on the pre­vi­ous year to approach just less than one per week on aver­age. How­ever, the cur­rent fin­an­cial year Q1 and Q1 has seen lower num­bers high­light­ing the vari­able nature of requests. The pro­por­tion of requests pro­cessed under EIR arrange­ments has fallen some­what in recent years. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 1.

Table 1: Num­ber of FOISA/ EIR Requests Received, ²⁰⁄₂₁ to date

Request Type	FY 20⁄21	FY 21⁄22	FY 22⁄23	FY 23⁄24	FY 24⁄25 Q1 & Q2
FOISA	21	25	20	42	14
EIR	14	17	8	4	3
FOISA/EIR	1
Total	37	42	29	46	17
% FOISA	57%	60%	69%	91%	82%

1. The most rel­ev­ant per­form­ance meas­ure for all requests is the pro­por­tion of requests met with­in stat­utory times­cales (which may vary depend­ing on the nature of the request). CNPA per­form­ance in respond­ing to all requests is gen­er­ally very good and has been at or above 95% over the last 4 years (Table 2). A per­form­ance bench­mark fig­ure¹ for all Non-Depart­ment­al Pub­lic Bod­ies (NDPBs) in Scot­land (2013−2020) is 85% for FOIs and 88% for EIRs.

2. The num­ber of intern­al review requests remains very low, with only two in ²³⁄₂₄ and one to date in ²⁴⁄₂₅ (still in pro­cess). The out­come of the two in ²³⁄₂₄ was fur­ther inform­a­tion provided. No refer­rals to the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er have occurred since FY ²⁰⁄₂₁. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 2.

¹Source: Scot­land Inform­a­tion Request Stat­ist­ics (myso​ci​ety​.org)

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Table 2: Inform­a­tion requests per­form­ance over­view, ²⁰⁄₂₁ to date

All FOI/EIR Requests	FY 20⁄21	FY 21⁄22	FY 22⁄23	FY 23⁄24	FY 24⁄25 Q1 & Q2
Met with­in Stat­utory Timescales	97%	95%	97%	98%	100%
Intern­al Review Requests	2	2	1	2	1
Refer­ral to Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Commissioner	1	0	0	0	0

1. From FY ²³⁄₂₄ to date, the dis­tri­bu­tion of requests across the organ­isa­tion is shown in Fig­ure 1. Cor­por­ate Ser­vices encom­passes the largest num­ber and includes all cor­por­ate requests that include areas such as gov­ernance, fin­ance, pro­cure­ment, HR, ICT and inform­a­tion man­age­ment, amongst oth­ers. Conservation/​nature com­prise the next largest cat­egory, fol­lowed by Plan­ning & Place and Vis­it­or ser­vices (includ­ing access). Requests vary sig­ni­fic­antly in breadth and complexity.

Fig­ure 1: Requests by Ser­vice Area, ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ to date

(Fig­ure would be inser­ted here)

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Sub­ject Access Requests

1. Under data pro­tec­tion legis­la­tion, indi­vidu­al have the right to request inform­a­tion held about them by an organ­isa­tion, a pro­cess known as a sub­ject access request (SAR). The Park Author­ity gen­er­ally receives very few SARs com­pared to oth­er pub­lic bod­ies; it gen­er­ally holds and pro­cesses rel­at­ively little per­son­al data oth­er than the min­im­um it requires to ful­fil its stat­utory duties and oth­er activ­it­ies effectively.

2. Through­out ²³⁄₂₄ and the first half of ²⁴⁄₂₅, the Park Author­ity has pro­cessed two form­al sub­ject access requests. One of these con­tin­ued into the cur­rent quarter as an agreed exten­sion to the time peri­od of the ori­gin­al request, and is now complete.

Com­plaints

1. The Park Author­ity has a form­al com­plaint hand­ling pro­cess set out clearly on its web­site. Where pos­sible staff are encour­aged to resolve more straight­for­ward com­plaints dir­ectly with­in 5 work­ing days (known as Stage 1 – front­line res­ol­u­tion). Where a com­plain­ant remains dis­sat­is­fied or the issue is more com­plex, a com­plaint is logged for a Stage 2 invest­ig­a­tion and response, gen­er­ally by a seni­or mem­ber of staff. The total num­ber of com­plaints logged is shown in Table 3, as well as a sum­mary of top­ics. In all but 2 cases, com­plaints were invest­ig­ated and a reply sent with­in the tar­get peri­od of 20 work­ing days; 1 res­ul­ted in ongo­ing com­mu­nic­a­tions and the oth­er required wider input due to com­plex­ity and was two days later than target.

Table 3: Com­plaints over­view, ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ to date

	FY 23⁄24	FY 24⁄25 Q1 & Q2
Num­ber of complaints	10	6
Main top­ic areas of complaints	Plan­ning 7  Vis­it­or Services/​Access/​Transport 4  Con­ser­va­tion 4  Cor­por­ate Ser­vices 1

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