Warnings and enforcement from Stornoway Marine Directorate Office 2022: EIR release

Information requested

“Specifically pertaining to commercial fishing activity within The Western Isles - please provide the full text of all written warnings, advisory letters, fixed penalty notices, and verbal re-briefs issued in 2022 and 2023 by any branch or department of Marine Scotland/Marine Directorate - either directly from the Stornoway office or elsewhere in the organisation.”

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.

Response to your request

As your request says “specifically pertaining to commercial fishing activity” I have carried out searches to identify documents within the scope of your request that relate to only commercial fishing, which we consider to mean wild caught fish and does not include aquaculture. Marine Directorate may have issued other letters of the type you requested that relate to aquaculture operations so if you wish to have copies of these letters, please let us know.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of 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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This is because you asked for the full text of verbal rebriefs but, as they are spoken in person, we do not record the exact words that are said at the time.

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 verbal advice given in relation to possible infringements of fisheries legislation, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

*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.