FOI Request - Review of 101003692590 Land and Property Sales
Request 101003786619
Review of 101003692590 Land and Property Sales
Please open an internal review.
Please provide the buyer of each sold asset. The council did so in a previous iteration of this request: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/sale_of_council_assets_21#incoming-1476372]
Response 10-06-2025
Following your request for a review (our ref: 101003786619) of your Freedom of Information (FOI) Request Land and Property Sales (ref: 101003692590), a review meeting was held on 4th June 2025. In attendance were the Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer, Property Asset Manager, and Information Co-ordinator, in consultation with Solicitor.
Your FOI Request from 7th January 2025 was discussed.
We reviewed our response of 4th February 2025 in which the information requested was supplied, with the exception of the names of the buyers. In the response sheet it was advised that this information was available from the Registers of Scotland. The Review panel found that we uphold the decision not to give the names of the buyers; however, we should have applied the relevant exemption: Section 25 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - information otherwise accessible - and should have stated that clearly in our response. We apologise for that omission. For ease of reference, please see a link to the Registers of Scotland here: https://www.ros.gov.uk/
Furthermore, it was noted that, had Section 25 not been applied, then it is likely that exemption Section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - Personal Information - would have been applicable.
You highlighted that information of the type you requested was published in a response to a previous FOI in 2019. It was confirmed that due to the retentions that are applicable for FOI requests, our records of the 2019 request and response have been deleted. Furthermore it was discussed that it is likely that the information would have been subject to the same exemptions in 2019, but we are unable to verify this.