Aberdeen Harbour minutes and correspondence: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for “I wish to recieve the following information with regards to the Aberdeen Harbours dealings with Marine Scotland:

1) copies of minutes of meetings held between Abredeen Harbour Board and Marine Scotland between March 2018 and September 2019.

2) copies of emails or other written correspondence between Aberdeen Harbour and Marine Scotland between March 2018 and September 2019.”

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.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 11(2) (personal information of a third party of the EIRs applies to that information. The reason why that exception applies is explained in the Annex to this letter.

ANNEX
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
An exception applies
An exception under regulations 11(2) (personal information of a third party) of the EIRs apply to some of the information you have requested.

Regulation 11(2) – To the extent that environmental information requested includes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and in relation to which either the first or second condition set out in paragraphs (3) and (4) is satisfied, a Scottish public authority shall not make the personal data available. 
An exception under regulation 11(2) (personal information of a third party) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested.
An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EISRs (personal information of a third party) applies to some of the 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.

Due to the large number of documents I have attached the following link which gives you access to view and download the requested files: 
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x9mln7dt2mlzt1q/AABH2Pjw1_5pKP_jEBp5glQ7a?dl=0
The link goes to the Scottish Government Dropbox area, a place to share large and/or numerous files. To access the documents via Dropbox use the above link and click a document to view it in your browser.

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.