Funding package for peatland restoration: EIR release

Information requested

How much of the £250 million ten-year funding package announced in 2020 pledged for peatland restoration has been spent, and how much peatland has been restored using these funds?

Can you break this down by year and by the organisations that have spent it?

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 most of the information you requested.

The answer to your question is: since 2020, when the £250 million ten-year funding package was committed towards peatland restoration we have made available a total of £66 million in funding across the three financial years since that announcement. However, not all these annual budgets were fully utilised within each financial year and £31.56 million has been spent to restore around 18,800 hectares across the three financial years of 2020-21, 2021-22 and 2022-2023. Final figures for financial year 2023-2024 will be available from May 2024.

Most of the information you have requested on actual spend per annum for peatland restoration is available from annual reports published by the Peatland ACTION delivery partners: Forestry and Land Scotland, Cairngorms National Park Authority, Loch Lomond & The Trossachs National Park and NatureScot. The information requested for Scottish Water does not appear in their annual reporting so this information can be found on the table below for the years 2020-2021, 2021-2022 and 2022- 2023.

Information on the hectarage restored by Peatland ACTION Delivery Partners can be found on NatureScot’s Peatland ACTION Data mapping portal.

For convenience I have extracted and provided spend and hectares restored broken down by year and by Peatland ACTION Delivery Partner in the table below.

	2020-2021		2021-2022		2022-2023
Peatland ACTION Delivery Partner	Spend	Hectares	Spend	Hectares	Spend	Hectares
NatureScot	£6.215 m	4439.45	£2.6m	4147.02	£10.3m	5010.06
Cairngorms National Park Authority	n/a*	n/a	£1.408m	689.33	£1.945m	1144.37
Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park Authority	£0.222 m	187	£0.245m	201.23	£0.473m	457.53
Forestry and Land Scotland	n/a**	981.54	£3.590 m	586.25	£4.4m	917.97
Scottish Water	£0.078 m	49.26	0	7.05	£0.085	17.4
Total	£6.515 m	5657.25	£7.843 m	5630.88	£17.203	7547.33

* The CNPA delivered its first year of direct responsibility for peatland restoration through Peatland ACTION in 2021/2022

** The information on spend for Forestry and Land Scotland for financial year 2020-2021 is not available from theirannual report but they may be able to provide it if you contact them directly at enquiries@forestryandland.gov.scot

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested because Forestry and Land Scotland has the information you are looking for.

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