Woodland Creation Grant: EIR release

Information requested

I'd like to submit a Freedom of Information request about the Woodland Creation Grant scheme.

Please can you provide me with the most recent inspection reports for the following projects:

• Fasque Upland
• Allt Bhran
• Breconside new planting
• Abernethy Natural Regeneration
• Daltallochan Hill

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

Please can you provide me with the most recent inspection reports for the following projects:

• Fasque Upland
• Allt Bhran
• Breconside new planting
• Abernethy Natural Regeneration
• Daltallochan Hill

For ‘Breconside new planting’ above, further to your email confirmation of 27 August 2024, we are providing the inspection report information for the project:

• 22FGS67749 Breconside WC 22 – By Sanquhar NS819022.

For all the above listed projects, given the volume of documents included in our response, copies of the inspection report information we hold in relation to your request will be emailed to you separately.

• Abernethy Natural Regeneration

No inspection report is available for the above project. In line with our inspection procedure, we inspect after final claim. We are expecting the final claim on this contract to be submitted in 2024 and will inspect after that point.

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 of exceptions under regulations 10(4) (a) of the EIRs (information not held) and 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information you have requested.

Please see Annex A for the reason(s) these exceptions apply.

ANNEX A
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Regulation 10(4) (a) – information not held
Regarding the information requested for Abernethy Natural Regeneration, under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4) (a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for which is held by Scottish Government agencies. 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 Scottish Government agency work, such as grant claims and inspections, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

Regulation 11(2) – Personal data of a third party

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.

*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.