Publication - FOI/EIR release

Planning submissions for offshore wind installations around Scotland: EIR release

Published: 24 September 2024
Directorate: Marine Directorate
Topic: Marine and fisheries, Public sector
FOI reference: EIR/202400425450
Date received: 4 August 2024
Date responded: 22 August 2024

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

Information requested

My request concerns planning submissions for offshore wind installations around Scotland since January 1 2020.

This includes associated infrastructure such as cabling and sub-stations.

I would like a list of all the representations made by the Royal Yachting Association (RYA) regarding offshore wind developments.

This covers anything from general policy statements to anything expressing objections to, or support for, particular projects. Or anything requesting amendments to planning proposals.

Please provide a full list of projects where the RYA has submitted comments along with links to those representations.

Please also provide a list of any other submissions from the RYA regarding offshore developments, with links to those submissions.

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.

I enclose some of the information requested. 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 regulation 11(2) - personal information of a third party, of the EIRs apply to that information. Further information relevant to your request is available from marine.gov.scot. You may wish to search for “Consultation responses – RYA (Royal Yachting Association)”.

Regulation 11(2) – To the extent that environmental information requested includes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and in relation to which either the first or second condition set out in paragraphs (3) and (4) is satisfied, a Scottish public authority shall not make the personal data available.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information of a third party) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing itwould 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 notsubject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interestin disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is alreadypublicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, youdo not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then pleasecontact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Some of the information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designsand Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use,for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most documents supplied by the Scottish Government will have been produced by government officials and will be Crown Copyright. You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown Copyrightmaterial on the National Archives website at: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

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.