Muckrach Woodland Creation Scheme: EIR Release

Information requested

All information of the Muckrach Woodland Creation Scheme since April 27th 2024. This includes all emails, phone calls or any meetings with Savills, Cairngorms National Park Authority, Scottish Government Ministers, NatureScot and RSPB (sent or received).

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.

Due to the volume of information covered by your request, copies of the documents will be emailed to you separately.

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 regulations 11(1) (personal data of the applicant) and 11(2) of the EIRs (personal data relating to a third party) applies to some of the information you have requested. This information has been redacted in the requested documentation.

In addition, 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 in the requested documentation.

Where it has not been possible to redact this information because it comprises the entire document, some documents have been withheld from release. The withheld documents are:
• 38 photographs of black grouse lek sites
• 6 maps depicting black grouse lek sites

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

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 202400422902 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

1 page PDF

File size

125.0 kB