Marine Directorate requests received under The Freedom of Information Act: EIR release

Information requested

A list of all requests you have received under The Freedom of Information Act or the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 between June 1, 2023 and the date at which you process this request. You need not include this request.

For each request please provide:

- the reference number assigned to the request;
- the date at which the request was received;
- the date at which a response was issued;
- whether or not an exemption was applied to the response, specifying whether it was applied in whole or in part, and under what reasons given in the regulations;
- a brief description summarizing the information requested;
- the name and email and/or correspondence address or the person or group requesting the information.

Please include requests which have not yet received a response.

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

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested.

1. “The reference number assigned to the request”. This has been provided for all cases under column A of the attached spreadsheet.

2. “The date at which the request was received”. This has been provided for all cases under column B of the attached spreadsheet.

3. “The date at which a response was issued”. This has been provided for most cases under column C of the attached spreadsheet.

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 requested because some cases have not been issued by the date of response of this request.

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 the date at which a response was issued, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

4. “Whether or not an exemption was applied to the response, specifying whether it was applied in whole or in part, and under what reasons given in the regulations”.

Exceptions (EIR requests) and Exemptions (FOI requests)
The exception(s) or exemption(s) applied have been provided for all cases, where applicable, in columns E to Z. I have also indicated in column D where a full response has been provided with no exceptions or exemptions applied.

Reasons
The Scottish Government (SG) is committed to publishing all information released in response to information requests, except under exceptional circumstances. These are proactively published anonymously on our publications page Publications - gov.scot. Where applicable, I have provided direct links to the published response in column AC of the attached spreadsheet, and the full reasons for applying an exception/exemption can be found in the response letter.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. SG policy decrees that response letters are not routinely published where no information has been released to a requester. Note that there may also be a time delay between issuing the response and its publication. Where a response has not been published, I have provided a summary reason code(s) in columns E to Z. The Key to these codes can be found in Annex A.

5. “A brief description summarizing the information requested”.

This has been provided for all cases under column AA in the attached spreadsheet. Note that this text has been extracted directly from the ‘Case summary’ field held within the SG system used to track information requests, and we do not hold any other summary information. For any published response, you are able to view the full request online. Other than our case summary field provided to you, we hold no additional summary of a case on our systems.

For any unpublished responses, if you require a more detailed summary for any specific requests then please submit a separate request for copies of the full responses.

6. “The name and email and/or correspondence address or the person or group requesting the information”.

We understand from this part of your request that you are interested in the requesters details – either the private individual or the group who has made the request.

Under our regulation 9 duty to provide help and assistance under regulation 9 of the EIRs, please note the following:

- SG policy is that any information requests and our responses that are published, are published anonymously.
- We publish the information released under information requests to be helpful, but this is not mandated. We are proactively publishing information that has been requested and deemed in the public interest to release fulfilling under our legal obligations under the relevant regulations.
- Any published information would always need to comply with UKGDPR/DPA regulations. Publishing the requests anonymously meets this obligation.
- At the point of publication, no one had requested any details of the requester under either FOISA or the EIRs, and so we do not have to consider release of a requester’s details under either of those regulations.
- However, as your request above has been made under the EIRs, we now do need to consider release of all requesters’ details under the EIRs.

(i) If the request was made by an organisation, we have provided details of the organisation under column AB of the attached spreadsheet. If you need to contact any of the organisations about their information requests, the contact details of each organisation can be found on the internet.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.

(ii) If the request was made by an individual then we have stated this in column AB and have withheld their details in full as it is 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.

(iii) Some of the information you have requested is available from What Do They Know website - https://www.whatdotheyknow.com.

(iv) Where a requester has submitted their information request via this website, the full response and requester name is published. I have provided a direct link to these specific cases in column AD of the attached spreadsheet.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.

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 202400442407 - Information Released - Annex A

File type

PDF

File size

105.7 kB

EIR 202400442407 - Information Released - Annex

File type

Excel document

File size

71.4 kB