FOI release

SIA licences suspended or revoked in Scotland in the last 5 years

Updated 16 February 2023

1. Request

How many SIA licences have been suspended or revoked in the last 5 years in Scotland?

Could this be broken down by i) year, ii) sector, and iii) reason for suspension/revocation?

2. Response

In respect of question 1iii this email will constitute a refusal to deal with your request for the reasons I will set out below. However, the reasons as to why the SIA would suspend or revoke a licence are published via our Licensing Criteria, Get Licensed.

In respect of question 1i and 1ii, relating to number of suspended or revoked licences in the last 5 years in Scotland, broken down by year and sector, I can confirm that the SIA does hold this information. I attach an Excel spreadsheet containing this information.

Please note that these figures relate to licence holders whose home address is in Scotland rather than where the information/offence that led to the licensing action took place.

2.1 Exceeding the appropriate cost limit

Section 12(1) – (4) of the Freedom of Information Act allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to comply with the request in its entirety or to confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. In the case of a public authority such as the SIA, the appropriate cost limit is £450.

The ICO guidance ‘The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004’ sets out how a public authority should estimate whether the work required to obtain information is reasonable and appropriate. In the case of requests that would require work on the part of public authority staff, this is estimated at a rate of £25 per person per hour. This means that 18 hours is considered the appropriate limit.

Reporting limitations within the database where the information in respect of the reasons for each suspension and revocation is held means that the relevant information cannot instantly be isolated and retrieved. Each suspended and revoked licence over the past five years would need to be manually interrogated. To consider each case over the five-year period you have requested would significantly exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and appropriate cost limit of £450.

2.2 What information can we provide?

The difficulty in determining what information falls within this request relates to the five-year time parameter of your request. As you can see from the spreadsheet, there are several hundreds of revocation and suspension cases that relate to this time frame, which means that to interrogate each case to find each reason would significantly exceed the appropriate cost limit. However, the SIA’s reasons for suspending and revoking a licence are limited to those provided in our Get Licensed (SIA licensing criteria) document, which is publicly available and published on our website. The reasons as to why the SIA would suspend a licence can be found on page 61. The reasons as to why the SIA would revoke a licence can be found on page 58.

2.3 Next steps

In order to better facilitate your request, I suggest that you significantly reduce the time parameter of your request. This is so that we can manually search each case until the appropriate cost limit is reached. Given that it is a very time intensive exercise to manually look at each suspension and revocation case. I would ask that you limit your search to a month within the period that you are interested in.

The SIA will search as many cases up to the appropriate cost limit within this reduced timeframe. If we are able to search the cases well within the appropriate cost limit we will get in touch and request that you provide us with details of a further month that you would like to be searched.

I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in respect of this FOIA request and whether you would like assistance in trying to refine the scope of your request.

[Reference: FOI 0388]