Planning Permission Appeal cases closed by The Planning and Environmental Appeals Division (DPEA): EIR release

Information requested

I would like to request an FOI response on the below matters, broken down for the years 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 (to present date):

• Can you provide the total number of Planning Permission Appeal (PPA) cases that have been closed by the DPEA (excluding incomplete/no remit/out of time cases)?
• How many of these appeal cases were “allowed” or upheld in favour of the appellant, including instances where additional conditions may have been imposed by the Reporter/Scottish Ministers.

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 can confirm that the total number of planning permission appeals cases that have been decided by the DPEA for years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 (up to 11 September) is 743. The breakdown for each year is detailed within the table below.

The table below details the breakdown of how many of the appeals were "allowed" or upheld in favour of the appellant.

	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023 (up to 11th October)	Total
Appeals Allowed	70	59	95	84	45	353
Appeals Allowed in Part	2	3	2	1	0	8
Appeals Dismissed	94	80	72	88	48	382
Total	166	142	169	173	93	743

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.