Response

Whilst we aim to provide information wherever possible, having considered your request, we can inform you that we are unable to provide you with the information you have requested as it would prove too costly to do so within the context of the fee regulations.

The current cost threshold is £600 and we estimate that it would cost in excess of this amount to process your request. Therefore, this represents a refusal notice in terms of Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 – Excessive Cost of Compliance.

To explain, the Authority which includes Forensic Services, was established in April 2013. The case in question is held on a legacy case management system which is not accessible and was not configured to record the description of individual productions. To provide the information you have requested would require checking and identifying these details in hard copy files. As per the inventory provided this could be over 2000 items that would need to be checked. In addition, not all of the examinations would have been done at the same legacy forensic lab but also other legacy forensic labs and / or other external forensic providers, so may not be recorded in the same manner.

The Authority has assessed that the £600 cost limit within the Act equates to 40 hours of work and so your request would exceed the cost threshold.

To assist, we would advise that this information would have been reported to the court at the time, which the defence legal team would have access to. A request for this information could be sought from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) using the following email address - foi@copfs.gov.uk

We would also add that SPA Forensic Services do not retain any of the items as due process is that items are returned to Police after examination.