Pollution and the clean-up thereof in the South Esk River: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/03378  
Date received: 13 November 2018  
Date responded: 7 December 2018

 

 

All communications and correspondence the office of the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform has sent or received over the past six months in regards to pollution and/or the clean up of pollution in the South Esk River and/or the Mary Burn, a tributary of the South Esk River by Newbattle in Midlothian.

 

 

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 all of the information you requested.

 

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