Publication - FOI/EIR release

Rural business inspections data: EIR Review

Published: 9 September 2024
Directorate: Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate
Topic: Farming and rural, Public sector
FOI reference: EIR/202300382075 Review of 202300377826
Date received: 23 October 2023
Date responded: 20 November 2023

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Information requested

Original request (202300377826)

You asked for data relating to inspections made for businesses in receipt of rural payments, referred to on this page. In particular you asked for data for the last five years, detailing the number of inspections and including the following criteria -

Date of inspection
Name/address of business inspected
Name/address/coordinates of land inspected
Result of inspection
Action taken if breach found

You also asked for the total number of businesses that received a rural payment in the last five financial years.

Response

Further to my letter of 27/10/23, I have now completed my review of our response to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for:

Data relating to inspections made for businesses in receipt of rural payments, referred to on this page.

Please share a spreadsheet consisting of data for the last five years, detailing the number of inspection and including the following criteria:

Date of inspection
Name/address of business inspected
Name/address/coordinates of land inspected
Result of inspection
Action taken if breach found

Please break the data down by year, and by type of inspection.

In addition, please provide a total number of businesses that received a rural payment in the past five financial years.

I have concluded that the original decision should be confirmed, with modifications.

I have considered whether regulation 11 (2) of the EIRs for personal information was applied correctly, as being this the motive of your dissatisfaction.

I agree with my colleague’s decision of applying it for businesses that have been registered as sole traders and small partnerships, but not for the rest of agricultural businesses because they are larger businesses, and the probability that their addresses are also a household is very low. These included: Ltd companies, Registered Company, Corporations, Associations, Trusts, Charities, Agencies, Local Authorities, etc opposite to Sole traders and Small partnerships for which there are some privacy risks attached to their information (ie. Location). I trust you appreciate that the Scottish government needs to treat very carefully personal information, including such for small businesses where probabilities that these are managed by individuals and/or families are very high (especially in Scotland). So I have asked my colleagues to provide additional information (business type) to be able to separate ones from the others. And be able to release some of the information you have requested. Please find it attached.

I thought that you may be find helpful this link where rural payments are published Defra, UK - CAP Payments Search

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.