Rural payments made to the Far Ralia Project: EIR release

Information requested

A breakdown of any rural payments or commitments including Forestry Grants made to the Far Ralia project in the last two years.

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.

The Rural Payments and Inspections Division has confirmed that woodland creation grants are the only commitments made to this project over the period in question.

Project	Commitments	Payments	Operation	Period
Far Ralia	£2,559,303.91	£0.00	Woodland Creation	Aug 2022 to Aug 2024

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