The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund: EIR release

Information requested

Information about Rural Payments for two Guernsey registered collective investment schemes, called (i) The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund and (ii) The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund 2. Their reference numbers under the Guernsey Financial Services Commission are 2662996 and 2754219 respectively.

Please provide all rural payment information for these two funds since 1 January 2019, in the form of payment commitments. Please could the information be broken down by:

(a) Each fund.
(b) For each Fund the name of the location of each landholding, e g Whitlaw, Stobo, etc.
(c) For each location the rural payments and forestry payments (FGS), broken down by year, with totals for each year.
(d) For the rural payments, please break these down by payment types, eg BPS, GR, etc, also with totals for each year.

There is already a FOI response online, showing payment commitments to the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund for the Stobo estate (reference 202400396614) Please use this as a format for providing this new information for each location. Please do not ask me to contact Scottish Forestry about these payments, as the FGS payment commitments are on your system under rural payments.

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.

(a) Each fund.

A search of our records has identified that we only hold details of a business registered as The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund. The answers below relate solely to this business.

(b) For each Fund the name of the location of each landholding, e g Whitlaw, Stobo, etc.

Location names listed on our system under The Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund business are: Stobo Forestry Carbon Sequestration, Bank, Brockloch, Part Burnside, Part Whitlaw & Part Colmslie, Part Glensone, Breconside Hill, Glencaple, Part Bandominie

(c) For each location the rural payments and forestry payments (FGS), broken down by year, with totals for each year.

The payment amounts since 01 January 2019 for BPS, Greening, AECS and LFASS have already been provided in the response to case reference 202400396614.

For BPS and Greening payments, because entitlements are not linked to a specific area of land (they are assigned to BPS payment regions), it is not possible to set out the specific amounts paid against specific land parcels. Therefore, although we have provided you with a total payment amount, it is not possible to breakdown a payment value to a specific location.

For AECS, FGS and LFASS payments can be attributed to the locations below:

Scheme	Name
AECS	Stobo Forestry Carbon Sequestration
FGS	Part Whitlaw & Part Colmslie
LFASS	Stobo Forestry Carbon Sequestration

The payment amounts for BPS, Greening, AECS and LFASS have already been provided in the response to case reference 202400396614.

(d) For the rural payments, please break these down by payment types, eg BPS, GR, etc, also with totals for each year.

This has been provided in the response to case reference 202400445945.

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.