Request:
1. Can you please identify any representatives and employees of Crown Estate Scotland who attended the meeting?
2. an you please identify anyone else at the meeting including but not limited to the Prince of Wales?
3. In what venue did the meeting take place?
4. Can you please provide any briefing notes (or similar) which were provided to the aforementioned Crown Estate employees/representatives in advance of the meeting and as part of their preparations for the meeting?
5. Did Crown Estate Scotland prepare a draft or actual agenda for the meeting? If so can you please provide a copy of that agenda.
6. Prior to the meeting taking place did Crown Estate Scotland write to the Prince of Wales about the meeting and the issues to be discussed at the meeting? If the answer is yes can you please provide copies of this correspondence and communication.
7. Prior to the meeting taking place did the Prince of Wales write to Crown Estate Scotland about the meeting and or issues to be discussed at the meeting? If the answer is yes can you please provide a copy of this correspondence and communication.
8. During the course of the meeting did the Prince of Wales and or anyone acting on his behalf hand over any written material of any kind to the delegation from Crown Estate Scotland? If the answer is yes can you please provide a copy of this material.
9. Following the meeting did Crown Estate Scotland write to the Prince of Wales about the meeting and or any of the issues raised at the meeting? If the answer is yes can you please provide a copy of this correspondence and communication?
10. Following the meeting did the Prince of Wales write to Crown Estate Scotland about the meeting or any of the issues discussed at the meeting? If the answer is yes can you please provide a copy of this correspondence and communication?
11. If material relevant to this request was previously held but has since been destroyed can you please provide the following information.
a. In the case of each destroyed piece of correspondence and communication can you identify author (s), recipient (s) and the date it was generated.
b. In the case of each destroyed piece of correspondence and communication can you state when it was destroyed and why?
c. If destroyed documentation of any kind - including correspondence and communication - continues to be held in another form can you please provide copies of this information.
Response:
1. Amanda Bryan (Chair) and Simon Hodge (Chief Executive).
2. Information that we do not have (Section 17), no meeting notes were taken.
3. Dumfries House, Cumnock.
4. A briefing note was prepared (enclosed – ‘Crown Estate Scotland – briefing.pdf’). This was sent to Amanda Bryan and Simon Hodge and to HRH Prince of Wales’ private office in advance of the meeting.
5. Crown Estate did not prepare a draft or finalised agenda for the meeting.
6. Refer to enclosed correspondence*
7. Refer to enclosed correspondence*
8. Amanda Bryan and Simon Hodge did not receive any written material from the Prince of Wales or anyone acting on his behalf during the course of the meeting.
9. Amanda Bryan responded to an email sent in follow up to the meeting by the Prince’s Principal Private Secretary (enclosed). Amanda Bryan and Simon Hodge were subsequently invited to attend a visit the Prince of Wales was making to Nansledan on 6 March 2020. Amanda and Simon both attended this event; arrangements were made with the Duchy of Cornwall’s office and mostly by telephone. Simon Hodge and Colin Palmer (Crown Estate Scotland Director of Marine) met with a representative of the Aquaculture Dumfries House Group, referred in enclosed correspondence*. Helen Howden (Governance Manager) arranged this meeting directly
10. Refer to enclosed correspondence*
11. a, b, & c. Correspondence of this nature aren’t deemed as records and would therefore only be managed within Outlook and not within our Electronic Documents Records Management system, which would be managed and audited for destruction. When recipients delete an email, it will go into the deleted items, and whenever a user closes Outlook they are prompted if they’d like to permanently delete all items located there. It is then is held for 30 days, as the time of this meeting is well beyond 30 days, any correspondence that was received and deleted would be permanently destroyed without an audit trail that may contain the details you are requesting (e.g. recipient, date, author, date when destroyed). Any correspondence relating to this meeting was deleted in accordance with our retention schedule, where general correspondence should be deleted within 6 months of receipt unless the correspondence relates to a specific record class indicated in our retention schedule.
Note:* items of correspondence that have ‘red’ redactions is deemed personal information as defined under General Data Protection Regulation, and disclosure of that information would contravene the first two principles. Therefore, exemption 38(1)(b) – personal data of a third party, under FOISA is applied.
Request for Review:
I would now like to request an internal review into the handling of the request.
I would be grateful if the reviewer could examine the request again in its entirety.
I am also concerned about the organisation's failure to provide details about the destruction of documents. You will note that I asked for those details in my original request. I also asked for copies of those documents if held in another form.
Response:
The responses to the questions have been reviewed and no change is required. The documents and copies of correspondence provided are a full response of all documents and correspondence held by Crown Estate Scotland.
An outline of the process followed and our retention schedule was enclosed in the original response. All documents held at the time of the request have been forwarded as part of the response. The request was made on 17 October 2020 regarding a meeting that took place on 20 January 2020 – almost 9 months after the meeting took place. It was noted in the original response that any correspondence relating to this meeting was deleted in accordance with our retention schedule, where general correspondence should be deleted within 6 months of receipt unless the correspondence relates to a specific record class indicated in our retention schedule.
During the review, no other documents held in any other form were found – all documents held have been forwarded to you.
