Expressions of interest for a district heating loan: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00376
Date received: 8 February 2018
Date responded: 15 February 2018

Information requested

How many expressions of interest have been made for a district heating loan under the District Heating Loan Fund between 2011 and 2017.

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.

The information you requested is as follows:

Year	Expressions of interest received
2011	38
2012	37
2015	40
2014	33
2015	25
2016	27
2017	29

Please note that the above figures include both formal and informal expressions of interest to the District Heating Loan Fund.

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