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, provid­ing an update for the full fin­an­cial year ²⁴⁄₂₅.

The paper also describes num­bers and out­comes of form­al com­plaints to the Cairngorms Nation­al 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, the Park Author­ity 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 four fin­an­cial years. 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 ²⁴⁄₂₅ is very sim­il­ar to two out of three pre­vi­ous years. The pro­por­tion of requests pro­cessed under EIR arrange­ments has ris­en in the latest year. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 1.

Table 1: Num­ber of FOISA/ EIR Requests Received, ²¹⁄₂₂ to date

Request Type	FY 21⁄22	FY 22⁄23	FY 23⁄24	FY 24⁄25
FOISA	25	20	42	28
EIR	17	8	4	17
FOISA/EIR		1
Total	42	29	46	45
% FOISA	60%	69%	91%	62%

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). Park Author­ity per­form­ance in respond­ing to all requests is gen­er­ally very good and has been at or above 95% over the last 4 years, and 100% in the most recent. (Table 2). Bench­mark­ing is pos­sible via the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er stat­ist­ics portal¹ which com­piles and pub­lishes stat­ist­ics for all bod­ies sub­ject to the require­ments. This reports an over­all per­form­ance (all bod­ies) of 88% and 92% over the last 4 repor­ted quar­ters for FOI and EIR responses respect­ively. For the ​“Oth­er” sec­tor­al group in which the Park Author­ity resides, those fig­ures are 95% and 94%.

2. The num­ber of intern­al review requests remains very low, with two each in ²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁴⁄₂₅. The out­comes of both reviews in ²⁴⁄₂₅ was a single addi­tion­al doc­u­ment sup­plied in each case (which had been mis­takenly over­looked ori­gin­ally). No refer­rals to the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­er have occurred since FY ²⁰⁄₂₁. Fig­ures are sum­mar­ised in Table 2.

[1] FOI and EIRs stat­ist­ics | Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Commissioner

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

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

1. From FY ²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁴⁄₂₅, 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 and ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ combined

(Visu­al­iz­a­tion described in sur­round­ing text, omit­ted in this conversion)

1. The fre­quency of requesters is set out in table 3 for the years ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ com­bined. The major­ity of requesters make a single request, but 22% of requests are from repeat requesters.

Table 3: Num­ber of requests by fre­quency of requests

Num­ber of requests with­in 2023⁄24 and 2024⁄25 com­bined	Num­ber of requesters
Per­sons mak­ing 6 requests	1
Per­sons mak­ing 4 requests	2
Per­sons mak­ing 3 requests	1
Per­sons mak­ing 2 requests	11
Per­sons mak­ing 1 request	52

Sub­ject Access Requests

1. Under data pro­tec­tion legis­la­tion, indi­vidu­als 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. In ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅ com­bined, the Park Author­ity has pro­cessed two form­al sub­ject access requests. One of these was revis­ited as a request cov­er­ing a longer time peri­od but is not coun­ted as a third request here.

Com­plaints

1. The Park Author­ity has a form­al com­plaint hand­ling pro­cess. 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 4, 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 4: Com­plaints over­view, ²⁰²³⁄₂₄ and ²⁰²⁴⁄₂₅

	2023⁄24	2024⁄25
Num­ber of complaints	10	9
Main top­ic areas of complaints	Plan­ning	8
	Con­ser­va­tion	4
	Vis­it­or Services/​Access	4
(may be assigned against mul­tiple categories)	Cor­por­ate Services	2
	Trans­port & travel	1

Paul Dav­is­on pauldavison@​cairngorms.​co.​uk