Compensation paid and catch records under coastal netting compensation scheme: EIR release

• The total compensation amount paid per recipient within this publicly funded compensation scheme; and
• Total recorded catch records per year from 1995 to 2015 for each of the recipients who who obtained compensation 

Should it be decided to refuse any part of the information requested on either of the grounds stated above you also requested that Marine Scotland provide a detailed explanation of the decision and how the public interest was weighed against commercial sensitivity.

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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the catch and compensation information requested because it is personal data of a third party 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.

We have provided catch and compensation information relating to companies and those individuals who have consented to the release of the information in Annex A to this letter. We have not released catch or compensation information relating to individuals who have not given their consent nor anonymised it. This is because we consider that there is a high risk that the anonymised data could be linked to an individual.