Freedom of information requests: a practical guide from our team

We didn’t set out to become serial FOI filers. When Martin J Keatings first started challenging the UK Government’s refusal to grant a Section 30 order of the Scotland Act 1998, we assumed court pleadings and public statements would give us everything we needed. We were wrong. The real story of Scottish governance lives in the margins of ministerial briefing notes, the redacted paragraphs of legal advice, and the internal emails that civil servants pray nobody asks for. We learned quickly that freedom of information requests aren’t just a bureaucratic exercise — they’re a crowbar for constitutional transparency. This guide distils everything our team has learned about turning FOI into a precision tool, whether you’re chasing Mid-Scotland and Fife constituency data or peeling back the layers of Whitehall correspondence that shape the independence debate.

Why we rely on FOI in our constitutional commentary

Our work sits at the intersection of law and political accountability. When we began examining the mechanics of a Section 30 order — the legislative device that temporarily transfers competence to Holyrood for an independence referendum — we quickly hit a wall. Governments on both sides of the border were speaking in platitudes while the substantive legal arguments remained locked in filing cabinets. FOI became our scalpel. It allows us to test public statements against documentary reality, and in a constitutional landscape where every procedural nuance matters, that evidentiary backbone is indispensable.

FOI as a constitutional lever

Here’s what most commentators miss: the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 isn’t merely an access statute — it’s a structural check on executive power. When we file a request probing Scottish Government analysis of a Section 30 order’s legal viability, we’re not just hunting for a headline. We’re forcing the state to articulate its reasoning on the record. That record becomes citable in litigation, admissible in parliamentary debate, and usable by campaigners across the Mid-Scotland and Fife constituency who deserve to know what their elected representatives knew and when they knew it. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to receive information, and FOI gives that guarantee teeth in domestic law.

Our first breakthrough request

We cut our teeth on a deceptively simple ask: correspondence between the Scottish Government and the UK Cabinet Office regarding the Lord Advocate’s reference on an independence bill. The response landed in our inbox as a 47-page PDF, heavily redacted but revealing a timeline of ministerial hesitation that nobody had publicly acknowledged. That single disclosure reshaped three months of our commentary and taught us a lasting lesson — the documents that matter most are often the ones nobody else thinks to request. Since then, we’ve built entire analysis pieces around FOI returns from local authorities in Mid-Scotland and Fife, tracking how referendum preparedness filtered down to council planning committees long before any Section 30 order was formally requested.

Drafting a bulletproof request: our team’s method

Precision drafting is the difference between a fruitful disclosure and a £600 cost-refusal letter. Scottish public authorities can reject requests where the cost of compliance exceeds prescribed limits, and they’ll seize any excuse to claim your wording is too broad. Our approach balances surgical specificity with strategic ambiguity — we want to capture internal discussions without giving the authority an easy route to say “too vague” or “too expensive.”

Identifying the right Scottish public authority

This step trips up even experienced researchers. A request about a Section 30 order might logically target the Scottish Government, but the UK Government holds parallel correspondence, and the Scotland Office often sits on the most revealing exchanges between Edinburgh and London. We map the information landscape before typing a single word. For Mid-Scotland and Fife matters, we’ve filed with NHS Fife, Fife Council, Police Scotland, and the Scottish Parliament’s corporate body — each holding distinct slices of the governance picture. The MyGov.scot FOI portal has streamlined submissions to Scottish authorities, but we maintain our own tracking spreadsheet because the portal’s search functionality remains limited.

Our internal checklist for selecting an authority runs like this:

• Does this body actually hold the information, or are we guessing?
• Has a previous disclosure from them revealed useful document types we can reference?
• Are they a Scottish public authority under Schedule 1 of the 2002 Act, or will we need to use UK-wide legislation?
• What’s their track record on timeliness and redaction aggression?

The art of the follow-up question

Initial disclosures rarely tell the full story. We treat every response as a springboard. If a briefing note references an attached legal opinion that wasn’t included, we file a follow-up specifically naming that attachment. If minutes mention a “further discussion” with no corresponding record, we ask for it by date and participants. This iterative approach has yielded some of our most impactful material on Section 30 order deliberations, because civil servants often disclose the surface-level document while hoping you won’t notice the deeper paper trail it reveals.

Navigating Scottish FOI exemptions and public interest tests

Exemptions are where most FOI campaigns stall. Scottish authorities deploy them strategically, and if you haven’t prepared your counter-arguments in advance, you’ll waste months on appeals that go nowhere. We’ve learned to anticipate which exemptions will be claimed before we even file, building our public interest arguments into the request itself.

Ministerial communications and the Section 30 order

Section 29 of FOISA — covering formulation of Scottish Government policy — is the exemption we battle most frequently. When we request internal correspondence about a Section 30 order, the government routinely argues that disclosing ministerial exchanges would inhibit free and frank policy discussion. Our counter relies on the public interest test: where the policy in question concerns fundamental constitutional arrangements affecting every voter in Mid-Scotland and Fife, the public interest in transparency substantially outweighs the government’s convenience. We cite the Scottish Information Commissioner’s own guidance emphasising that policy formulation exemptions weaken over time, and that matters of significant public controversy merit greater openness.

When legal privilege is claimed

Legal professional privilege presents a tougher obstacle. The Scottish Government has claimed privilege over external counsel’s advice on Section 30 order mechanics, and unlike policy exemptions, privilege carries a stronger presumption against disclosure. We don’t treat this as impenetrable. Privilege can be waived, and we’ve successfully argued that where the government has publicly summarised legal advice to bolster its political position, it cannot simultaneously claim blanket privilege over the underlying documents. The Scottish Information Commissioner has shown willingness to examine privilege claims forensically when the subject matter engages constitutional rights protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Appealing to the Scottish Information Commissioner

When an authority digs in, we escalate. The Scottish Information Commissioner’s office is the statutory appeal body, and while its processes move slowly, its decisions carry legal force. We’ve taken appeals through every stage — from initial review requests to full Commissioner investigations — and the discipline of building a formal case file has sharpened our entire approach to FOI.

Building your case file

We treat every appeal as litigation in miniature. That means preserving all correspondence in chronological order, logging every phone call with FOI officers, and drafting submissions that mirror the structure of legal pleadings. For a recent appeal concerning withheld Mid-Scotland and Fife constituency data — specifically, demographic modelling that informed referendum planning assumptions — we submitted a 12-page argument addressing each exemption claim point by point. The authority folded before the Commissioner issued a decision, releasing the data with minimal redactions.

What a Commissioner’s decision looks like

Commissioner decisions are publicly available and carry precedential weight. A typical decision notice runs through the requested information, the exemption claimed, the authority’s reasoning, the applicant’s counter-arguments, and the Commissioner’s analysis. Where the Commissioner orders disclosure, authorities almost always comply. Even where we lose, the decision provides a roadmap: it tells us exactly which arguments failed and why, allowing us to refine our approach for future requests on Section 30 order documentation. We publish every decision we’re involved in, win or lose, because the reasoning itself advances public understanding.

Publishing and weaponising the disclosed material

Obtaining documents is half the job. Turning them into commentary that shifts public debate is where our team’s legal background pays dividends. Raw FOI returns are dense, jargon-laden, and designed to obscure as much as they reveal. Our role is translation.

From PDF dump to front-page story

We start by stripping every document to its structural bones: who wrote it, who received it, when, and under what heading. Then we cross-reference against the public timeline. A briefing note dated three weeks before a ministerial statement often reveals the gap between private analysis and public positioning. We’ve built entire blog series around single FOI disclosures, layering the disclosed material with legal commentary on Martin J Keatings’ litigation strategy and its implications for the broader independence movement. The documents provide the factual spine; our analysis supplies the constitutional context that makes them legible to a non-specialist audience.

Ethical lines we won’t cross

We publish documents aggressively but not recklessly. Personal data gets redacted before publication — names of junior civil servants, personal email addresses, mobile numbers embedded in email signatures. We don’t publish material that would genuinely endanger ongoing legal proceedings or expose individuals to harassment. These aren’t concessions to secrecy; they’re safeguards that preserve our credibility with the authorities we continue to request from. A reputation for responsible disclosure makes it harder for officials to paint FOI campaigners as indiscriminate data-dumpers.

The Scottish Information Commissioner’s office has consistently upheld the principle that FOI exists to serve public scrutiny, and we treat that principle as a professional obligation. We publish, we contextualise, and we invite readers to draw their own conclusions — but we don’t strip-mine documents for sensationalism at the expense of accuracy.

FAQ

How long does a typical FOI request take in Scotland?

Scottish authorities must respond within 20 working days under FOISA. In practice, complex requests — particularly those involving Section 30 order documentation or intergovernmental correspondence — frequently trigger extensions. The MyGov.scot FOI portal tracks submission dates automatically, but we recommend maintaining independent records. If an authority misses its deadline, you can request an internal review, which adds another 20 working days. Appeals to the Scottish Information Commissioner typically take three to six months for a decision.

Can I request information about Mid-Scotland and Fife from UK-wide bodies?

Yes, but you’ll need to use the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 rather than FOISA for bodies like the UK Cabinet Office or the Scotland Office. The two regimes operate in parallel with similar structures but different oversight — the UK Information Commissioner handles appeals for UK-wide bodies, while the Scottish Information Commissioner covers Scottish public authorities. We routinely file under both regimes when tracking Section 30 order negotiations that span Edinburgh and London.

What does a Section 30 order actually do?

A Section 30 order under the Scotland Act 1998 temporarily modifies the schedule of reserved matters, transferring legislative competence to the Scottish Parliament for a specific purpose. In the independence context, it would give Holyrood the power to legislate for a binding referendum. Without one, any referendum bill passed by the Scottish Parliament faces legal challenge on competence grounds — which is precisely the issue Martin J Keatings has litigated. Our FOI work has focused heavily on the internal government assessments of whether and when such an order might be granted.

Is there a cost to filing FOI requests?

Filing is free through the MyGov.scot FOI portal or by email. Authorities can charge for disbursements like photocopying or postage, but we’ve never faced a charge for electronic disclosure. The real cost is time — drafting precise requests, tracking deadlines, and preparing appeals demands sustained attention. We consider it an investment in constitutional accountability, and the returns have justified every hour spent.

Does Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights strengthen an FOI appeal?

Article 10 protects the right to receive and impart information, and while it doesn’t create a standalone FOI right, it reinforces the public interest arguments in disclosure disputes. The Scottish Information Commissioner has referenced Article 10 in decisions involving matters of public debate, and we routinely cite it when arguing that constitutional transparency engages fundamental rights. It’s not a trump card, but it adds weight to appeals where the withheld information concerns democratic processes affecting constituencies like Mid-Scotland and Fife.

We didn’t write this guide to celebrate our filing statistics. We wrote it because FOI is the most underused democratic tool in Scotland. Every citizen can file a request through the MyGov.scot FOI portal, and every disclosure chips away at the culture of administrative secrecy that shields constitutional decision-making from public view. Whether you’re chasing Section 30 order legal advice or simply want to know how your local council spent referendum preparedness funds in Mid-Scotland and Fife, the machinery exists. Use it. Appeal when you’re stonewalled. Build your own paper trail. The documents are there, waiting for someone stubborn enough to ask.