Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) Powers to Investigate Wildlife Crime: EIR release

Information requested

The following under the relevant Freedom of Information legislation;

All correspondence between the Scottish Government and Police Scotland in relation to the recently announced intention to extend the Scottish SPCA’s powers to investigate wildlife crime.

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.

Response to your request

I enclose a copy of all of the information you have requested.

Some of the information contained in some of the documents has been redacted as set out under Section 11(1) of the EIRs as it is personal information.

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 202300383236 - Information Released - Document 1 and 2

File type

22 page PDF

File size

2.6 MB