Money received from wind farms in rent and non domestic rates: EIR release

Information requested

How much money the Scottish Government received in the 2022/23 tax year:

1. in rent from wind farms and single turbines on publicly owned land;
2. in non domestic rates from wind farms and single turbines on publicly owned land;
3. in non domestic rates from all local authority areas which they had billed for and collected on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Response

The answers to your questions are:

1. The Scottish Government received £13,297,204.48 in rental income from wind farms and single turbines in 2022-2023. This includes income through Forestry and Land Scotland, and the Scottish Ministers’ Crofting Estates.

2. We cannot estimate the amount of non-domestic rates raised from wind farms and single turbines on publicly owned land, as we do not hold information on the ownership of land on which subjects liable for non-domestic rates are situated.

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 because we do not hold information on the ownership of land on which subjects liable for non-domestic rates are situated.

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 non-domestic rates income from wind farms and single turbines on publicly owned land, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

3. Non-domestic rates are a local tax, and rates raised are retained by local authorities and help pay for local public services. The Scottish Government guarantees local authorities the sum of nondomestic rates and General Revenue Grant funding. As part of this process, local authorities nominally contribute the amount collected in non-domestic rates (net of reliefs funded by the Scottish Government, but gross of any locally funded reliefs) to a central non-domestic rates pool.

The amounts nominally contributed by each local authority to the non-domestic rates pool are available at https://www.gov.scot/publications/non-domestic-rates-income-statistics/.

About FOI

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