FOI Request - 101003810112 Staff Hospitality and Entertainment Expenses

Request 101003825600

Review of 101003810112 Staff Hospitality and Entertainment Expenses

Dear Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer,

I am writing to formally request an internal review of Moray Council’s response to my Freedom of Information request dated 24 June 2025, regarding staff hospitality, meals, and entertainment expenses over the last three financial years.

Grounds for Review

Implausible “Nil” Response
The claim that no hospitality or entertainment expenses were incurred across the entire council in 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24 is implausible. It is statistically improbable that a council of Moray’s size incurred zero spending in connection with:

Client or stakeholder meetings

Internal team meals

External hospitality or event-related refreshments

Any event where food or alcohol was provided

The complete absence of any spending—whether claimable or paid directly—is inconsistent with the norms of public sector operation and council practice across Scotland. This “nil” response strongly suggests under-disclosure or a misinterpretation of the request scope.

Failure to Account for Directly Paid Expenses As outlined in the attached Travel & Subsistence Policy, Moray Council centrally books travel and accommodation via Click Travel and other internal systems. Therefore, it is likely that any hospitality or event-related costs—particularly those involving venues, hotel meals, or conference catering—would be paid directly by the council and not claimed by staff.

My request explicitly included both:

Expenses claimed by staff

Expenses paid for by the council

The response appears to address only claimed expenses. No attempt has been made to interrogate directly incurred costs. This is a material failure in fulfilling the request and renders the Section 17 notice (information not held) invalid.

Absence of Advice and Assistance
Under Section 15 of FOISA, the Council has a duty to advise and assist. No attempt was made to clarify the scope or suggest ways to identify data via procurement codes, ledger categories, or event bookings. Other councils have provided partial or full datasets in response to this same request by filtering ledger codes associated with hospitality, catering, and events.

Misapplication of ‘Not Applicable’
Response items 2a–2f are marked as “not applicable.” This is not a valid exemption under FOISA. If the council holds no data, Section 17 should have been cited. If the data exists but was not searched due to cost or system limitations, Section 12 or 15 duties should apply. Using “not applicable” avoids clear statutory framing and is procedurally inadequate.

Public Interest and Transparency
Given current public concern over financial transparency, particularly in hospitality, alcohol, and public-facing spending, there is a strong public interest in disclosure. The Scottish Government has repeatedly emphasised prudent use of funds and openness in local government. A blanket “nil” return without explanation or context does not meet public interest standards.

Requested Outcomes
A full review of all directly incurred hospitality or event-related expenses (even if not claimed by individuals)

Identification of relevant expenditure via procurement or financial ledgers (e.g., account codes for food, catering, events)

A clear statement confirming whether any such expenses were incurred but not captured in the original response

Proper citation of FOISA exemptions where information is not held, and advice under Section 15 if scope refinement is needed

If this internal review does not result in a satisfactory response, I reserve the right to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner under Section 47 of FOISA.

Response 20-08-2025

Following your request for a review (our ref: 101003825600) of your Freedom of Information (FOI) Request – Staff Hospitality and Entertainment Expenses (our ref: 101003810112) - a review meeting was held on 18th August 2025. In attendance were the Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer, Head of Environmental and Commercial, Senior Solicitor, and Information Co-ordinator.

Your FOI Request (101003810112) from 24th June 2025 was discussed.

On review, it was found that we should not have given a ‘nil’ response for Question 1 of your original FOI; we apologise for this. After looking again at the request, we acknowledge that some information is held. Unfortunately, given the disparate nature of the information, it would take over 40 hours for this to be collated, as such it is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - excessive cost. To confirm, there are no ledger codes, categories for Hospitality and/or Entertainment or suchlike that can easily be filtered to extract this information.

We can confirm that various areas would need to be searched to find potential information; these areas would include:
• internal catering, which predominantly covers teas and coffees that were deemed to not fall under the common definition of ‘Hospitality’ or ‘Entertainment’. Requests are not categorised, as such each request would need to be manually checked to see if they included a request for Hospitality and/or Entertainment.
• Travel/Subsistence Expense claims, which covers personal meals for staff on work duty; this is covered by the Travel and Subsistence Policy (previously provided). These would predominantly be for the individual only and therefore do not fall under ‘hospitality’ or ‘entertainment’.
• Expense claims; it was noted that there could potentially be expenses for items that could be described as ‘Staff Hospitality and Entertainment Expenses’ that may have been claimed and signed off by the respective responsible budget holder; however, our system for processing claims like this is entirely manual and we would have to search each expenses claim individually in order to find this information.