Housing developers/builders planning appeals: EIR release

Information requested

How many Housing Developers/House builders have appealed to the Scottish Government because local Councils have rejected their house building proposals/plans? Can you also confirm how many of these appeals were upheld? It would also be useful to know how many of these plans included social housing.

We requested clarification on 01 July 2024 relating to your ask: it would be helpful to know whether you require statistics from a particular time period/year and a particular local authority area or all 34 local authority areas within Scotland. It would also help if you were able to clarify whether you were looking for information that relates specifically to new housing developments or to include change of use of existing buildings.

This response was received on 04 July 2024 confirming the following:

• All 34 local authority areas
• New housing developments from 2010 onwards

Response

The information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIR’s), 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.

I can confirm that 197 of housing developers/housing builders have appealed to the Scottish Government because local Councils have rejected their house building proposals/plans. I can confirm that a total of 288 appeals were received with 134 of these appeals allowed and 154 dismissed.

Both figures relate to all 34 local authority areas from the period of April 2015 to 11 July 2024. Unfortunately, due to the system set-up, we are unable to provide the data between 2010 and April 2015 aswell as being unable to provide a specific breakdown of social housing which are included in the figures.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested in relation to the data from 2010 because this information is not collected by the Scottish Government.

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. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about planning applications and appeals clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.