EIR/202500469499 · FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Forestry Grant Scheme information: EIR release
Information requested
Please could you provide a breakdown of projects in receipt of Forestry Grants, through the Forestry Grant Scheme, over the last five years.
If you could provide information or a list on what money paid out has funded that would be helpful.
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.
Please find attached the information we hold in relation to your request.
The attached report shows the Case Detail, Option Name (which explains what the funding supported), and Grant Value of all projects approved for funding since April 2020.
For more detail on what each option (as listed in Column E, Option Name) supports, view the Forestry Grant Scheme grant option requirements on the Rural Payments and Services website at: https://www.ruralpayments.org/topics/all-schemes/forestry-grant-scheme/
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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.