Scottish Forestry - Tree planting: EIR release

Information requested

A. Please give the (1) total number of all grants and other funds either paid or still to be paid for trees and tree planting in Scotland yearly, covering 2018 to 2024 (or most recent yearly data available), (2) who the grants were given to and (3) the amounts given for each grant.

B. For the same time period (2018 – 2024), please provide data on how many trees were planted under each grant and what percentage of trees have survived in (1) year one, (2) year two, and (3) year three, and/or (4) currently.

Response

Please see below and attached for some of the information we hold in relation to your request. 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.
• An exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (Manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested, because the necessary variables are held in individual records but our computer systems do not allow us to collate them into presentable information, and a manual collation would be unreasonable due to the high number of records covered by your request and therefore the high burden of collating and presenting the information. Please see below for details of where this exception applies.

A. Please give the (1) total number of all grants and other funds either paid or still to be paid for trees and tree planting in Scotland yearly, covering 2018 to 2024 (or most recent yearly data available), (2) who the grants were given to and (3) the amounts given for each grant.

Total numbers of grants and total amounts paid to date are available in our published Forestry Grant Scheme Statistics – currently the most recent publication runs through March 2024 and includes figures from 2015. Table 3 “Approved Woodland Creation Options by Woodland Type” provides total numbers and values of approved grant applications; Table 9 “Claimed Woodland Creation Options by Claim Year” provides amounts paid to date.

Grant values paid and details of beneficiaries are published by the UK CAP Co-ordinating Body on behalf of the Scottish Government here: https://cap-payments.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx. Data is available for the 2021 and 2022 European Commission (EC) financial years (payments made between 16 October 2020 and 15 October 2021, and 16 October 2021 and 15 October 2022) and can be downloaded.

B. For the same time period (2018 – 2024), please provide data on how many trees were planted under each grant

We do not hold this information and do not require contract holders to provide it. The Forestry Grant Scheme statistics linked above provide data on tree planting by area (hectarage).

What percentage of trees have survived in (1) year one, (2) year two, and (3) year three, and/or (4) currently?

Whilst we may hold this information at an individual case level for case management purposes, it is not collated into aggregate data and to do so would therefore require a manual review of each case application record.

At a conservative estimate of ten minutes per application to review each of the approximately 1,500 woodland creation applications in scope, locate the information within the approximately 45,000 related case documents, and collate it, we estimate that this would take a minimum of 250 hours of experienced 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.

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.