Rural payments and payment commitments for property in Scottish Borders: EIR release

Information requested

1. Please could you provide a breakdown for all Rural Payments and/or Payment commitments for the last 10 years made to this property in the Scottish Borders. This must include Forestry Grant Scheme Payments.

2. Please provide the individual(s) and/or organisation(s) receiving these payments.

3. A detailed breakdown of any payments under the Agri Environment Climate Scheme.

4. The totals for each year and an explanation for any abbreviations used.

5. Any subsidy penalties incurred.

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

A search has identified two businesses which have received rural payments within the map area provided.

Business: Stobo Home Farm

	Year
Scheme	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021
SFPS	£45,041.43
SBCS	£3,720.82
RP	£5,369.99	£5,346.41	£127.80	£127.80	£127.80	£127.80	£127.80
AECS					£2,874.97	£18,702.41	£6,039.28	£14,259.11
LFASS	£40,034.27	£38,191.06	£38,035.41	£37,852.53	£37,772.67	£30,324.95	£17,392.25
TOTAL	£94,166.51	£43,537.47	£38,163.21	£37,980.33	£40,775.44	£49,155.16	£23,559.33	£14,259.11

*Note, LFASS scheme years 2019 and 2020 had a reduction to the payment rate to 80% and 40% of the 2018 payment rate respectively.

Business: The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund

	Year
Scheme	2021	2022	2023
BPS	£39,623.40	£40,825.69	£77,494.32
Under Declaration Penalty	Yes	Yes	None
Over Declaration Penalty	Yes	None	Yes
GR	£16,926.38	£17,493.09	£36,095.77
Under Declaration Penalty	Yes	Yes	None
FGS (no penalties)			£54,210.64
AECS - Moorland Management (no penalties)	£2,977.20
LFASS	£3,505.53	£3,489.54	£3,490.06
Under Declaration Penalty	Yes	Yes	None
TOTAL	£63,032.51	£61,808.32	£171,290.79

• SFPS Single Farm Payment Scheme
• SBCS Scottish Beef Calf Scheme
• RP Rural Priorities
• AECS Agri Environment Climate Scheme
• LFASS Less Favoured Area Support Scheme
• BPS Basic Payment Scheme
• GR Greening
• FGS Forestry Grant Scheme

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information for Stobo Home Farm (i.e. a detailed breakdown of AECS payments and information relating to any subsidy penalties) you have requested because it is information related to a small partnership which we consider personal information according to the definition of UK GDPR, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

About FOI

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