Compliance register referred to in UK Forestry Standard Compliance Procedures: EIR release

Information requested

Please share the compliance register referred to in this report [UK Forestry Standard Compliance Procedures].

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 10(4)(a) (Information not held at time of request) of the EIRs applies to the information you have requested.

Scottish Forestry did not establish a UKFS compliance register referred to in the document you cite. Other mechanisms and processes are in place to monitor compliance. Applications to Scottish Forestry receive are assessed against the legal and good forestry practice requirements as demonstrated within UKFS, along with other relevant guidance, and for the application to proceed, we must be satisfied that any plans match these requirements.

To support the duty under the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018 to promote sustainable forest management, we will also advise landowners or contractors of their requirement to follow best practice requirements, as demonstrated within UKFS, and how we might take action where they do not meet these requirements.

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.