EIR/202600519138 · FOI/EIR · clarification
Scottish Forestry - Information relating to approved afforestation cases: EIR release
Information requested
Please provide a list of approved afforestations, indicating whether each one was subject to an Environmental Impact Assessment, whether consent was required, and whether any land features (such as being situated in a protected area) were identified.
You provided clarification on the 5 June 2026 in regard to date range:
Please can you provide data for the last five full financial years?
This has been interpreted as 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2026.
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. This is a list of cases with consent decision and Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) case reference numbers.
An exception under regulation 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) (information not held) applies to some of the information in the format that was requested. Please see Annex A for a reason for this.
Under Regulation 9(1) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) (advice and assistance) I will provide further context that may be of help.
The number of afforestation decisions taken in the last five full financial years (1 April 2021 to 31 March 2026) is 640.
Since April 2021, Scottish Forestry adopted one screening opinion that a forestry project was an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) forestry project (i.e. consent required).
Scottish Forestry’s active EIA forestry projects may be viewed in this section of our EIA Public Register: https://www.forestry.gov.scot/current-eia-cases
All other current EIA projects arose due to one of the following circumstances:
Regulation 15 request from an applicant (for a scoping opinion). EIA enforcement action The screening opinion was issued before the period detailed in this request.
ANNEX A
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
Information not held.
An exception under regulation 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) (information not held) applies to some of the information requested because Scottish Forestry does not centrally collate information on land features arising from EIA decisions. Such information is retained solely at the individual case level and, as a result, we are unable to provide it across a cohort of applications. Please refer to the following weblink, which provides detailed information on individual cases, including both consent required and consent not required projects: Environmental Impact Assessment register | Scottish Forestry. This can be searched for by individual EIA case reference number as listed in the attachment.
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 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information Regulations (EIRs) (information not held) applies to some of the information in the format that was requested.