Covid-19 Grants or Loans to 3rd Party Organisations

15676

06/10/2021

FOI

Please supply details of every 3rd party organisation that has received financial support from the council, to date, in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. For the avoidance of doubt, this means any Covid-19 related payment from January 24th 2020.Such support could take the form of grants, loans or waived fees or taxes.Please provide me with the following details for each organisation supported:1. The name, address, and registration number, if known, of the organisation supported.
2. The value of the support provided, the nature of the support (grant, loan etc), the date payment was made.
3. The name of the funding scheme or funding stream that the organisation qualified for.
To be clear, I do not seek personal information, or information on financial support provided to individuals. Therefore, data protection concerns should not mitigate against providing this information.
In addition, I would be grateful if you could provide me with a total figure for Covid-19 support spending with 3rd party organisations for the period in question.
I would prefer not to receive the requested information in pdf format files. Please supply the requested information in a machine readable format file, such as MS Excel or CSV format files.
You will note that I sent a similar request on November 14 2020. A large number of Scottish local authorities declined to provide the requested information, because they relied on advice provided from the Scottish Government, via COSLA, that a Section 35 (1) a exemption would apply to this request.
With regards to this exemption, I have now received a decision from the Scottish Information Commissioner on this.
In addition, I seek up to date information that covers the whole period from January 24 2020 to the present day.

The Council has considered your request for information and concluded that the exemption s33(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 applies. Providing that "information is exempt if … its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the commercial interests of any person (including, without prejudice to that generality, a Scottish public authority)."

The Council is of the view that releasing the requested information would not substantially prejudice the commercial interests of the authority. However, the legislation provides that the release of the relevant information is exempt if it would substantially prejudice the commercial interests of any person. In this case, consideration was given to the way in which the release of this information into the public domain could impact the business. Although we are able to release more general statistical information such as the number of applications made, refused and paid and so on, releasing information detailing the business or individuals name and address may impact their commercial interests.

The Council considered the public interest in disclosing the information requested, and acknowledged that there is a general interest in ensuring the transparency of all transactions involving public funds. However, we also discussed the availability of public information regarding Covid grants, and considered that there was a general awareness of the existence of grant funding and the types of business who were able to apply for this funding. We also considered that the public interest lay with ensuring that the various funds were appropriately administered, rather than knowing what level of funding individual applicants received. We did not consider that there was any public interest in disclosing the detail regarding individual applications. In the circumstances, we weighed up the public interest in transparency against the commercial interests of the recipient business. We concluded that the involvement and oversight of the Scottish Government provides the public with the necessary assurances regarding the Council's administration of these grants and that there was therefore no justification to outweigh the protection of the applicant's commercial interests.

Covid-19 Grants or Loans to 3rd Party Organisations - Freedom of information requests