List of subsidies provided to erect or maintain deer fences: EIR release

Information requested

Please provide the following data for the year 2023/24.

1. A list of approved plantations which show whether each one was subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment, whether consent was required, and whether any land features (such as an SSSI) were identified
2. Please can you also provide a list of subsidies provided to erect or maintain deer fences for the year 2023/24, broken down by RPID Area.

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

The numbers below relate to the different aspects of your request set out above.
1. A list of approved plantations which show whether each one was subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment, whether consent was required, and whether any land features (such as an SSSI) were identified

We do not centrally collate information about our EIA decisions across all our approved applications, this information is held at the case level only and we cannot easily provide the information requested across a cohort of applications. For current cases, we publish the information the enquirer is seeking on a weekly basis on our website: Scottish Forestry - Public Register of Environmental Impact Assessments. Scottish Forestry is working to improve the accessibility to information outlined on the EIA Public Register. This work will improve access to information relating to current EIA decisions, as well as historic decisions, and is expected to be completed by the summer of 2025.

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) applies to some of the information you have requested, regulation 10(4)(b) (manifestly unreasonable requests), and regulation 10(4)(d) (material in the course of completion).

2. Please can you also provide a list of subsidies provided to erect or maintain deer fences for the year 2023/24, broken down by RPID Area.

Please find attached a list of Forestry Grant Scheme funding provided, for fencing, for the year 2023/24.

Please note these figures are drawn from contract commitments and represent the value of grant offers provided to applicants.

It is not possible for our systems to delineate forestry grants to the RPID Area boundaries, but we have broken the data down by Scottish Forestry Conservancy areas. These boundaries can be seen here on our public map viewer https://www.forestry.gov.scot/support-regulations/scottish-forestry-map-viewer.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested, breakdown by RPID areas because of exceptions under regulation 10(4) (a) of the EIRs (information not held) applies to some of the information you have requested.

Please see Annex A for the reason these exceptions apply.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400432106 - Information Released - Document

File type

Excel document

File size

34.0 kB

EIR 202400432106 - Information Released - Annex

File type

2 page PDF

File size

121.1 kB