National Park status for Largo Bay: EIR release

Information requested

Can you please provide the following information regarding applications for new National Park status.

E-mails and Application Forms submitted in support of a nomination for Largo Bay and it's desire to be considered for National Park Status. ref: https://www.gov.scot/news/new-national-parks-in-scotland/.

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

Annex A of this response contains all of the information that is held by the Scottish Government which is considered to be in scope of your request.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The Scottish Government does not hold information for “Application Forms submitted in support of a nomination for Largo Bay”. The deadline for nominating groups to submit their area’s proposal to the Scottish Government is 29 February 2024. Representatives from Largo Communities Together (the organisation that was exploring the possibility of a new National Park nomination for the Largo Bay area) have informed us that they do not intend to submit a proposal. Therefore we are refusing this part of your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of third parties 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. You will note that this information has been redacted throughout the disclosed documents.

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 202400396320 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

11 page PDF

File size

415.4 kB