Stobo Hope Woodland Creation Scheme claims and visits: EIR release

Information requested

In relation to the Stobo Hope Woodland Creation Scheme, under contract reference 23FGS74574.

1. Has Scottish Forestry visited the site of the woodland creation scheme since its last visit on 15 March 2024? If so, on what days and what was the purpose of each visit?

2. Has Scottish Forestry paid out any claims out of the £2million grant? If so, when was this paid and how much was paid? Please provide a full breakdown of all the items that were paid for.

3. How many claims to date have been made, and what has been paid from these claims?

4. Has there been any breaches of contract 23FGS74574? If so, what were these contract breaches for and have penalties been applied to the grant funding awarded (or requests for funds to be returned made?)

5. In order for any of this £2million grant to be paid must an inspection take place first?

6. Please provide all information relating to the inspection(s) if such inspection(s) have yet taken place. Please provide all reports and all details.

7. How many Scottish Forestry inspectors visited the site, over how many days did they inspect the site and when was the site visited?

8. If an inspection has not yet taken place, will an inspection be scheduled soon?

9. Please provide all documents, maps, forms and all correspondence between Scottish Forestry and all other parties, internal and external correspondence between Scottish Government staff and all correspondence between Scottish ministers and other parties since June 1st 2024.

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.

1. Has Scottish Forestry visited the site of the woodland creation scheme since its last visit on 15 March 2024? If so, on what days and what was the purpose of each visit?

Scottish Forestry (SF) visits between 15 March 2024 and the end of June were already identified in response to your request for information of 1 July 2024 with reference of 202400421105. Since then, SF has visited on 21 August 2024 and 11 September, for inspecting issues related to the woodland creation application and also the status of works.

2. Has Scottish Forestry paid out any claims out of the £2million grant? If so, when was this paid and how much was paid? Please provide a full breakdown of all the items that were paid for.

No payment has been made so far.

3. How many claims to date have been made, and what has been paid from these claims?

One claim has been submitted so far and no payments have been made.

4. Has there been any breaches of contract 23FGS74574? If so, what were these contract breaches for and have penalties been applied to the grant funding awarded (or requests for funds to be returned made?)

A claims inspection of the works undertaken so far has not yet taken place. On that basis no breaches have been identified so far.

5. In order for any of this £2million grant to be paid must an inspection take place first?

An inspection can take place after a claim has been paid. At that point if necessary, rectifiable breaches or penalties could be applied.

6. Please provide all information relating to the inspection(s) if such inspection(s) have yet taken place. Please provide all reports and all details.

n/a – see above

7. How many Scottish Forestry inspectors visited the site, over how many days did they inspect the site and when was the site visited?

n/a – see above

8. If an inspection has not yet taken place, will an inspection be scheduled soon?

An inspection decision has not yet been taken for this contract by the National Office live support team.

9. Please provide all documents, maps, forms and all correspondence between Scottish Forestry and all other parties, internal and external correspondence between Scottish Government staff and all correspondence between Scottish ministers and other parties since June 1st 2024.

Whilst our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (Manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to the information you have requested, due to the high number of records covered by your request and therefore the high burden of collating and presenting the information. The reason why this exception applies is explained in the Annex to this letter.

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Under regulation 10(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations:

“A Scottish public authority may refuse to make environmental information available to the extent that–
[…]
(b)the request for information is manifestly unreasonable”

The Scottish Information Commissioner has provided guidance that this definition includes requests that:

“would impose a significant burden on the public authority […] where complying with it would require a disproportionate amount of time, and the diversion of an unreasonable proportion of its resources, including financial and human, away from other statutory functions. The authority should be able to demonstrate why other statutory functions take priority over its statutory duties under FOISA. If the public authority does not perform statutory functions, it should demonstrate why its core functions are of a higher priority than the statutory requirement to respond to information requests.”

We consider that the diversion of the amount of experienced officer time to meet this request would meet these criteria, as it would have a significant negative impact on our ability to deliver our statutory responsibility to promote sustainable forest management and our core functions of supporting and delivering the management and expansion of Scotland’s forests in line with the Scottish Government’s Forestry Strategy.

Under regulation 10(1) of the EIRs:
“A Scottish public authority may refuse a request to make environmental information available if –
(a) there is an exception to disclosure under paragraph (4) or (5); and
(b) in all the circumstances of the case, the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by that in maintaining the exception.”

We consider that the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by the diversion of resources required to make it available and the associated impact on the delivery of our core functions.

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.