Information related to wellboat biosecurity at marine fish farms: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/03349  
Date received: 12 November 2018 
Date responded: 13 December 2018

 

 

You asked for “…information on wellboat biosecurity, cleaning and chemical waste discharges in relation to salmon farming in Scotland. Please include information relating to how and where the chemical wastes are discharged. Please include any operating procedures, guidelines, code of practice, regulations, notes and any other references to wellboat biosecurity, cleaning and chemical waste discharges in relation to salmon farming in Scotland. Please include information and data on where chemical wastes from wellboats are discharged. Please include information on cleaning of wellboats and where the wastes are discharged and any treatment.”. 

You said, “In terms of narrowing down the request your suggestion of a 2 year period seems reasonable.” 

 

 

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.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

Additionally, some of the information you have requested was made available in the response provided to your previous request FoI/18/01265 (dated 28th June 2018, information for the period 2013 to 2017).  Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.

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 an exception under regulation 11(2) (personal information of a third party) of the EIRs applies to that information.  The reasons why that exception(s) applies are explained below.

Copyright warning

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.  You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting.  Any other re-use, for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.  Most documents supplied by the Scottish Government will have been produced by government officials and will be Crown Copyright.  You can find details on the arrangements for re-using Crown Copyright material on the OPSI website at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/.

Information you receive which is not subject to Crown Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated.  You must ensure that you gain their permission before reproducing any third party (non-Crown Copyright) information.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.

Information related to wellboat biosecurity at marine fish farms for the period November 2016 to November 2018.

If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide a paper copy.

 

 

Regulation 11(2) – personal information of a third party

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EISRs 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 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