Amount Spent by FSS on Internal & External Legal Staff and Services

Your request was about the following information:

I am writing to request the following information under Freedom of Information legislation.

Q1. The number of FTE employees who work in Food Standards Scotland’s internal legal team, including all lawyers, solicitors, etc. in a) Financial Year 2022/23, b) Financial Year 2023/24, and c) Financial Year 2024/25.

Q2. The total amount spent by Food Standards Scotland on internal legal services, including the salaries of employees in the legal team, expenses, etc. in a) Financial Year 2022/23, b) Financial Year 2023/24, and c) Financial Year 2024/25.

Q3. The total amount spent by Food Standards Scotland on external legal services in a) Financial Year 2022/23, b) Financial Year 2023/24, and c) Financial Year 2024/25.

To clarify, I am seeking each of the three points of information for each of the three financial years so would be expecting nine distinct figures in the response, as per the following template. 

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) solely rely on Scottish Government (SG) Legal Shared Services Team (via yearly Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)), therefore this Freedom of Information (FOI) response holds spend on internal (SG Legal) & external legal services for the period requested.

Please find in the below table the information you requested: