Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) forms for Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) 23FGS74574: EIR release

Information requested

Further to your letter dated 8th February 2024 and my email dated 18th February 2024 [regarding FGS scheme 23FGS74574], please could you ensure that (as part of my original FOI) you provide all completed EIA screening opinion request forms that were submitted by the applicant for the work and any correspondence between the applicant and SF relating to EIAs, including the EIA screening forms.

Response

As noted in our acknowledgement, as this request is additional to your previous request, we are treating it as a separate request under the EIRs.

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.

Due to the volume of information covered by your request, copies of the documents will be emailed to you separately.

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 a third party) applies to some of the information you have requested. This information has been redacted on the requested correspondence.

In addition:

• An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) of the EIRs (commercial confidentiality) applies to some of the information requested. This exception applies to information regarding the private water supply of a business. Information redacted under this exception has been marked accordingly in the supplied documentation.
• An exception under regulation 10(5)(g) of the EIRs (protection of the environment) applies to some of the information requested because it would make public the locations of nesting / breeding sites of protected species. Information redacted under this exception has been marked accordingly in the supplied documentation.

For further detail on the application of these exceptions, please see Annex A below.

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 202400403505 - Information released - Annex A

File type

1 page PDF

File size

119.4 kB