Publication - FOI/EIR release

Ewen Mackinnon's 2019 land inspection and subsequent action: EIR release

Published: 10 January 2024
Directorate: Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate
Topic: Public sector
FOI reference: 202300344368
Date received: 6 February 2023
Date responded: 28 February 2023

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Information requested

All documentation relating to Ewen Mackinnon’s 2019 Land Inspection and the actions taken post the inspection, noting that the R&E letter refers to both the land inspection and SAF files.

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.

Response

We append a copy of most of the information you requested. A number of the documents contain personal data either concerning Officials’ names and contact details or data relating to businesses other than your client’s. This information is protected under the UK General Data Protection Regulation and therefore not releasable.

We have also not released documents not relevant to your query which come under the definition of ‘Internal Communications’. Under Regulation 10(4)(e) I do not have to release this information.

About FOI

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.