FOI/202500498142 · FOI/EIR · not held
Deputy First Minister & Cabinet Secretary for Finance statement on Offshore Wind: EIR release
Information requested
On 4th June 2025, Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes gave a speech on investment at Panmure House, Edinburgh.
During Q&A following the speech, Kate Forbes said this:
“If I take the offshore wind sector, it’s a really good example. So part of the reason for the attention, the interest, isn’t so much to do with what the Scottish Government has invested, but the government’s ambition when our original targets were completely exceeded. So if you recall, with the ScotWind leasing round, we had a target of 8 GW. We got bids for 25. And we had to decide whether or not to keep it at 8 GW, or to tear the plaster off and say, no actually we’re going to go big here. That, not £25 million, was what created the hive of activity. And the interest is what gave confidence to the supply chain investments. Ardersier Port would not have happened, Sumitomo probably wouldn’t have invested, if they hadn’t seen that activity being generated by a simple decision to proceed with a 25 GW leasing round rather than an 8 GW leasing round.”
This request relates to the decision described above by Kate Forbes. Please provide the following information:
1. Who inside the Scottish Government took the decision? 2. On what date was the decision taken? 3. On what date was the decision communicated to Crown Estate Scotland? 4. Please provide all documentation and correspondence relating to the decision described above by Kate Forbes.
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.
The answer to Question 1 of your request, “who inside the Scottish Government took the decision”, is as follows:
The ScotWind lease options were determined and awarded by Crown Estate Scotland on the basis of bids received and evaluated under the terms of the ScotWind leasing round. A number of Scottish Ministers were briefed on the ScotWind awards, including the then First Minister, Deputy First Minister, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero, Energy and Transport and Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Economy.
The answer to Question 2 of your request, “on what date was the decision taken”, is as follows:
The decision on which ScotWind bids should receive lease option awards was made by Crown Estate Scotland under the terms of the ScotWind leasing round. Scottish Government does not hold information on the date of that decision. Scottish Ministers were briefed on the results of the leasing round in the weeks prior to Crown Estate Scotland’s announcement of the lease option awards.
The answer to Question 3 of your request, “on what date was the decision communicated to Crown Estate Scotland”, is as follows:
As noted in the answer to Question (2), Scottish Ministers were briefed on the results of the ScotWind leasing round in the weeks prior to Crown Estate Scotland’s announcement of lease option awards. Scottish Government officials wrote to Crown Estate Scotland to acknowledge the outcome of the leasing round, noting that the results would be announced by Crown Estate Scotland on 17th January (see Document 1 disclosed with this response).
An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information of a third party) 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.
The answer to Question 4 of your request, “please provide all documentation and correspondence relating to the decision described above by Kate Forbes”, is as follows:
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 exceptions under regulations 10(4)(e) internal communications, and 10(5)(e) commercially sensitive information apply. The reasons why these exceptions apply are explained below.
We refer to your request of 7th August 2025 to which we responded under the Environmental Information Regulations on 30th September 2025. That request related ‘to documentation held by the Private Office of Kate Forbes (when she was Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy) which discusses the total size of the ScotWind leasing round. In particular, the decision to increase the originally expected size of 10 GW to the 25 GW announced on 17th January 2022’ and you asked for documents discussing that subject and decision, comprising:
1. All internal Scottish Government documents which were shared with Kate Forbes or her Private Office.
2. All correspondence between the Crown Estate Scotland and Kate Forbes or her Private Office.
3. All notes or minutes of phone calls, meetings, and virtual meetings between the Crown Estate Scotland and Kate Forbes.
We regard your previous request of 7th August 2025 as close to duplicating Question (4) of this request. Although we regard this request as close to duplicating your previous request, we have undertaken new searches for information, which have not uncovered any new documents.
Where information was found in relation to your previous request, exceptions under Regulation 10(4)(e) internal communications and Regulation 10 (5)(e) commercially sensitive information applied to that information, and to the information regarding this current request. In response to question 4, we therefore refer you to our previous response to you on 30th September 2025.
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.
Detected exemption language
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. An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information of a third party) 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.