Sewage sludge in Scotland investigation: EIR release

Information requested

My FOI request relates to an investigation carried out by Environmental Standards Scotland (‘ESS’) (ESS reference IESS.22.022). The investigation concerned the currently ineffective regulatory regime on sewage sludge in Scotland, and the specific lack of action in respect of the recommendations made in the Review of the Storage and Spreading of Sewage Sludge on Land in Scotland (‘The Sludge Review'), published in 2016.

ESS accepted the representation into its pre-investigative stage, and, in accordance with ESS’ procedure, this entails correspondence between ESS and the Scottish Government.

I would be grateful if you could send me all the information you hold relating to ESS’ investigation, including but not limited to:

• Copies of all correspondence between the Scottish Government and ESS in respect of the investigation.
• Copies of all notes from meetings between the Scottish Government and ESS in respect of the investigation.
• Copies of all notes of telephone calls between the Scottish Government and ESS in respect of investigation.

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 exception 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 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, 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.

I have included copies of the information you have requested in Annex B.

On reviewing materials within the scope of your request, exceptions have been applied in line with the EIRs. The exceptions applied can be found in Annex A.

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 202400405474 - Information released - Annex A & B

File type

19 page PDF

File size

313.5 kB