Muckrach Forestry Grant: EIR release

Information requested

I understand that, as at BrewDog, many of the trees planted at Muckrack (located north of the A938 between Duthill and Dulnain Bridge) with the aid of a grant from Scottish Forestry may have died - many eaten by hares. Please provide me, under freedom of information, with:

1. A copy of the contract, including the schedule of agreed payments, forest plan etc, between the owners of Muckrack (whom I believe to be the Trustees of Richard and Niall Hamilton Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe) or persons acting on their behalf and Scottish Forestry. From the SF online map viewer I believe the case reference might be 22FGS66265
2. Any information, whether in the form of reports from site visits, correspondence etc that Scottish Forestry holds about a) the number of planted trees that have died b) the number of birds that have died through collisions with the deer fencing.

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.

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.
• 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.

This information has been redacted from the supplied documentation.

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

In addition, an exception under regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held at time of request) applies to some of the information requested. This is because no inspection had been undertaken at the time of your request being made. 

However, in the interests of disclosure, a grant claim inspection has since been undertaken on 13th June. We are currently assessing the results of that inspection and will be discussing any required remedial works with the agent. Until that process is complete we are likely to consider the related documentation as ‘materials in the course of completion’ under the EIRs. 

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Personal data relating to third party
An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. 

Protection of the environment to which the information relates
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 and breeding sites of species protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and other protected species designations. This exception is subject to the ‘public interest test’. In this instance we consider that while there may be a public interest in disclosing this information as it may contribute to the transparency of decision making on the application in question, this interest is outweighed by the public interest arising from the protection of these protected species from the potential risk that would arise from publishing their exact nesting and breeding locations, for example from disturbance, egg collection, nest / sett destruction, etc.

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.