Scolpaig Spaceport: EIR release

Information requested

1. Whether the Government’s decision was made by an individual or a committee.
2. If the decision was made by committee, please may I have a copy of the relevant meeting minutes and/or transcript.
3. Please may I have copies (names redacted as required) of the 13 letters sent to PARD requesting that the project be called in.
4. Following from 3) above, please advise what steps the Government took to investigate the perceived ‘local authority conflict of interest and lack of transparency in process’.

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.

1.Whether the Government’s decision was made by an individual or a committee.
The decision was taken by the Planning Minister on behalf of Scottish Ministers.

2.If the decision was made by committee, please may I have a copy of the relevant meeting minutes and/or transcript.
As per the answer to Question 1, the decision was not made by a committee.

3.Please may I have copies (names redacted as required) of the 13 letters sent to PARD requesting that the project be called in.
13 representations requesting that the project be called in were received prior to the submission to Scottish Government Ministers. These are contained in Annex 1.

4.Following from 3) above, please advise what steps the Government took to investigate the perceived ‘local authority conflict of interest and lack of transparency in process’.
The Planning Minister was provided with advice to support a decision in the form of a submission from officials containing relevant information about the application. The submission set out that planning authority was also the applicant. It is not uncommon that a council may require to determine a planning application in which it has an ownership or other interest in the land. The Scottish Government address this issue within PAN 82 and Circular 3/2009 states that this in itself is not unreasonable, in fact it is quite normal and occurs regularly. In these circumstances though, it is essential that the planning authority does not allow any possible conflict of interests to have an undue influence on its planning assessment. 

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to parts 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.

 

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 - 202300368488 - Information released - Annex 1

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26 page PDF

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739.0 kB