Payments made to the Earl of Stair for storage of commercial vehicles: EIR release

Information requested

According to the Register of Interests for the Earl of Stair the government has made arrangements to lease:

"Approximately three hectares of land in Dumfries and Galloway provided to HM Government for temporary storage of commercial vehicles should need arise following change of UK status on 1 January 2021; one year commercial lease is in place and rental payments are received."

I am advised by the UK Government Department of Transport that this arrangement has been made with the Scottish Government.

Please disclose the value of payments that have been made in the past, or are expected to be made in the future, with regard to the above declaration. For the avoidance of doubt, please assume this to mean payment to any organisations where the Earl of Stair is a beneficiary or maintains a financial interest.

Please also supply any recorded materials that set out the details of this commercial arrangement such as the location and management arrangements for the site.

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 yourrequest 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

As of 31 March, £90,000 has been paid. This figure equates to 15 monthly payments of £6,000.

Please see Annex A to this response for a copy of the licence agreement between the Scottish Ministers and Stairs Estates which provides details of the management arrangements for the site. 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.

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.

202200290950_Annex A - Offer to enter into Licence

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