Rural Payments Inspectorates Directorate (RPID) Livestock Unit calculations: EIR release

Information requested

I would like to make a FOI about livestock units for the Rural Payments Inspectorates Directorate (RPID).

Please could the RPID provide the current definition(s) of one livestock unit that it uses, providing website links or sources as appropriate, and how long this (these) definition(s) have been used for.

When applications for woodland creation schemes potentially qualifying for government grants are made, Scottish Forestry consults a number of consultees, including RPID.

Scottish Forestry may ask RPID for information about agricultural productivity on land that is the subject of an application for a woodland creation scheme.

The number of livestock units that may be suitable for the land calculated by RPID (for a certain stocking density) may be given as a consultee response - ie the loss of agricultural production due to conversion from grazing land to woodland.

In the five years prior to 2023-2024, Scottish Forestry has approved woodland creation schemes amounting to the following number of hectares each year:
https://forestry.gov.scot/news-releases/woodland-scheme-approvals-highest-this-century
10,036ha - 2018-2019
10,879ha - 2019-2020
13,068ha - 2020-2021
12,377ha - 2021-2022
10,479ha - 2022-2023

This gives a total of 56,839ha - the number for 2023-2024 does not appear to yet be available.

Please could RPID for each of (ie broken down by year) the last six years (ie from 2018-19 up to 2023-2024), provide the following information:

Are RPID consulted for all woodland creation schemes, or only some of them? If the latter, what is the criteria for RPID being consulted?

How many woodland creation schemes was RPID consulted upon?

What was the total area in hectares for which RPID was consulted?

For this total area in hectares, what was the total loss in livestock units due to afforestation?

If the RPID cannot provide the livestock units lost for all the land afforested each year, please explain why this is the case.

Please provide all the totals from the above answers for the last six years.

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.

Please note that this response is being made jointly by Scottish Forestry and RPID.

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 10(4)(a) (Information not held at time of request) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, because it is not held by Scottish Forestry or RPID.
• An exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (Manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, due to the high number of records covered by your request and therefore the high burden of collating and presenting the information.

Please see individual question responses below for details of where this exception applies.

Please could the RPID provide the current definition(s) of one livestock unit that it uses, providing website links or sources as appropriate, and how long this (these) definition(s) have been used for.

Livestock Unit calculations have been used for a variety of schemes administered by RPID over many years. We do not hold information on exactly when livestock units for each animal type were created, nor when stocking density calculations were first introduced on a scheme by scheme basis. However, please find attached the calculation document used for LFASS on the basis it shows the livestock units figures we would use. The Less Favoured Area Support Scheme on RP&S can be found at  https://www.ruralpayments.org/topics/all-schemes/lfass/less-favoured-area-support-scheme-full-guidance/

RPID would use these livestock units as part of a calculation of stocking density if required for LFASS, but this is also what RPID would use if required in any other scheme context.

Are RPID consulted for all woodland creation schemes, or only some of them? If the latter, what is the criteria for RPID being consulted?

RPID are not consulted on all woodland creation schemes.

Applicants are required to engage with RPID at the due diligence stage of larger and more sensitive woodland creation applications, and if appropriate Scottish Forestry will formally consult with RPID during the Public Register stage of the Forestry Grant Scheme application assessment. Scottish Forestry consultation arrangements are outlined in the Forestry Grant Scheme Application Guidance and additional guidance on consultation arrangements for woodland creation applications on agricultural land is published on the Forestry Grant Scheme guidance – Guidance about woodland creation on agricultural land.

• How many woodland creation schemes was RPID consulted upon?
• What was the total area in hectares for which RPID was consulted?

RPID does not hold this information.

Scottish Forestry’s case management system holds this information but only at individual case level. To summarise the total number of schemes on which RPID was consulted and the total area in hectares would require a manual review of each case application record.

This would require experienced case managers or similarly knowledgeable staff to undertake such a review, and at an estimate of 10 minutes per application to review each of the approximately 1,500 woodland creation applications in scope, determine the consultation status and hectarage, we estimate that this would take around 250 hours of staff time. At 37 hours per week, this would represent approximately 7 weeks of a full-time officer’s working time.

Under regulation 10(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations:

“A Scottish public authority may refuse to make environmental information available to the extent that– […] (b)the request for information is manifestly unreasonable”

The Scottish Information Commissioner has provided guidance that this definition includes requests that:

“would impose a significant burden on the public authority […] where complying with it would require a disproportionate amount of time, and the diversion of an unreasonable proportion of its resources, including financial and human, away from other statutory functions. The authority should be able to demonstrate why other statutory functions take priority over its statutory duties under FOISA. If the public authority does not perform statutory functions, it should demonstrate why its core functions are of a higher priority than the statutory requirement to respond to information requests.”

We consider that the diversion of this amount of experienced officer time would meet these criteria, as it would have a significant negative impact on our ability to deliver our statutory responsibility to promote sustainable forest management and our core functions of supporting and delivering the management and expansion of Scotland’s forests in line with the Scottish Government’s Forestry Strategy.

Under regulation 10(1) of the EIRs:
“A Scottish public authority may refuse a request to make environmental information
available if –
(a) there is an exception to disclosure under paragraph (4) or (5); and
(b) in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in making the information
available is outweighed by that in maintaining the exception.”

We consider that the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by the diversion of resources required to make it available and the associated impact on the delivery of our core functions.

For this total area in hectares, what was the total loss in livestock units due to afforestation?

RPID does not use livestock unit calculations in consultation responses and does not hold this information.

If the RPID cannot provide the livestock units lost for all the land afforested each year, please explain why this is the case.

There is no requirement to utilise livestock units in a consultation response. To date RPID has not considered it necessary to undertake that detailed analysis on a case by case basis.

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 202400410351 - Information released - Annex

File type

1 page PDF

File size

14.4 kB