Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme in Inverness: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02890
Date received: 3 October 2018  
Date responded: 25 October 2018
 

 

You asked to know how much public money is used in support of the SMASS organisation based in Inverness, including any support from the Westminster Government.

 

 

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.

For the financial year 2018/19,  the Scottish Rural College (SRUC) at Inverness will receive £212,864  for the delivery of strandings investigations, of which £160,000 is from Marine Scotland and £47,864  from the UK Government.

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses