Felling permission at Balrownie Farm: EIR release

Information requested

I went for a walk up the Caterthuns at the weekend of 1st October. These are two hills of historic interest and scenic views located outside Brechin, Angus – DD9 7QR.

ALL the trees on the approach road up from Balrownie Farm have been cut down, destroying bird and wildlife habitat, not to mention the trees themselves. There is a Balfour Beatty sign at the bottom of the road so I suspected this was related to SSEN proposals for huge pylons. Apparently ‘wayleave’ was approved by Scot Gov and apparently a licence must be granted by the Forestry Commission for such tree felling.

I am writing to enquire if in fact a licence was obtained from the Forestry Commission for this work, who made the application and what the application entailed (its end purpose). I would also like to know the cost of such licences if possible.

I would be obliged if you can help with the above query.

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.

Please find attached a copy of the felling application and the issued permission in question.

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) of the EIRs (Personal data relating to third party) applies to some of the information you have requested. This information has been redacted in the documents provided. The reasons why these exceptions apply are explained in Annex A to this letter.

As noted in the application, the stated purpose of the felling operation is:

• [T]o clear windthrow caused by Storm Arwen and Corrie, which has been catastrophic across the farm, with significant portion of the windthrow around the landowner’s farm buildings and home.

Regarding costs, there is currently no charge for submitting a Felling Permission Application or for approving an application.

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Personal data relating to third party

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

EIR 202300379263 - Information released - Attachments 1 and 2

File type

21 page PDF

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788.9 kB