Details of payments made to various estates and rural organisations in the last six years: EIR release

Information requested

1. A detailed breakdown of all rural payments (and the total for each year) for the last six years that was paid to the following organisations:

• Annandale and Lochwood Estates LLP (Company Number SO306319)
• Annandale Estates
• Lochwood Estates
• The Raehills Trust (Annandale Estates Office, St Anns, Lockerbie, DG11 1HQ)
• Skairfield Ltd (SC183096)
• Raehills Farms Ltd (SC179395)

2. In addition you asked us to identify any further organisations that receive rural payments relating to land comprising the Annandale Estates for the last six years. 

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 have now completed my search and identified the following: from 6 organisations provided only 2 have received rural payments which are Annandale and Lochwood Estates LLP and Skairfield Ltd. Using the map provided (which you state may be not up to date) I have identified a further 21 businesses which are related to the Annandale Estates. I am afraid that we cannot definitely confirm that they are the only businesses managing the Annandale Estate land as I have only worked on the map provided by you. All rural payment details for all businesses listed is set out in attached FOI 202200302680 Annandale Estate – rural payments spreadsheet, which includes:

•  Pillar 1 payments which have been received by 21 businesses. However, please note for Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) if a business claim is greater than that of the land on the Estate, because their entitlements are not linked to a specific area of land (they are assigned to BPS payment regions), it is also not possible to set out the specific amounts paid against specific land parcels. Therefore, although we can provide you with a payment amount, not all of the money can be attributed to the Annandale Estate land.
• Less Favoured Area Support Scheme (LFASS) payment which has been received by 14 businesses.
• Pillar 2 payments (Agri Environment Climate Scheme (AECS), Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS), Rural Priorities (RP) )
• Convergence Payments, and also those paid in respect of Loans form the National Basic Payment Support Scheme (NBPSS) and the National Less Favoured Area Support Scheme (NLFASS).
• Please also note during my search colleagues who deal with LEADER, Farm Advisory Service (FAS) & Knowledge Transfer & Innovation Fund (KTIF), Capital Grants Schemes and the Beef Efficiency Scheme (BES) confirmed that no funding information was found either to the organisations listed by you or any businesses which are related to the Annandale Estate land.

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.

FOI 202200302680 - Information released

File type

Excel document

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29.4 kB