Planning appeal decisions 2022-23: EIR release

Information requested

1. The number of local authority decisions overruled by the Scottish Government in the fiscal year 2022-23.
2. The total amount (in £) the Scottish Government has spent on overruling local authority decisions in the fiscal year 2022-23.

You subsequently clarified that your request related to decisions made by reporters at DPEA and related to planning appeal decisions only.

Response

If I might firstly explain that, because, the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIR’s), 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.

Response to your request
Question 1 - I can confirm that in the fiscal year 2022-23, out of 151 planning appeals decided, 80 were allowed and 71 were dismissed.

For ease of reference I have attached a table of appeals allowed and dismissed broken down by planning authority in the attached Annex.

Question 2 - Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested in question “2” because this information is not collected by the Scottish Government.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about planning applications and appeals clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

We are however in a position to provide you with a breakdown relating to all aspects of our work including day to day costs of running the Division. To provide a bit of context to this spend I would confirm as follows :

1. Appeal work tends to form about 40% of the work we deliver under this total budget.
2. Of that 40% approximately half of these cases are planning appeals.
3. This budget covers all aspects of our work including day to day running costs of the Division.

	DPEA Spend on all work
2022/2023	£4,144,226

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 202300350058 - Information Released - Annex

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1 page PDF

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