Correspondence between Scottish Forestry and Gresham House/Scottish Woodlands relating to the Wester Leochel Farm woodland creation: EIR release

Information requested

Copies of all correspondence between Scottish Forestry and Gresham House/Scottish Woodlands (and any agents acting on behalf of either of those organisations) relating to the Wester Leochel Farm woodland creation proposal along with any notes of any meetings and/or phone calls relating to the proposal as well as any other documents held by Scottish Forestry relating to the proposal.

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 accept our apologies for the delayed response 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 exceptions under regulations 11(1) (personal data of the applicant) and 11(2) of the EIRs (personal data relating to a third party) apply to some of the information you have requested. This information has been redacted in the supplied documentation.

In addition:

• An exception under regulation 10(5)(g) (protection of the environment) applies to some of the information requested because releasing it would make public the locations of nesting /breeding sites of protected species (e.g. badger setts).
• An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) applies to some of the information requested because releasing it would prejudice the confidentiality of commercial information (e.g. quote values for the provision of works to private water supplies).

Information redacted under these exceptions has been redacted and marked accordingly in the supplied documentation.

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

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.

If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

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 202400415085 -Information Released - Annex A

File type

2 page PDF

File size

129.8 kB