Illegal disposal of waste (fly-tipping) in Scotland: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00357
Date received: 6 February 2018
Date responded: 6 March 2018

Information requested

'Information on how many prosecutions and convictions have been made for the illegal disposal of waste (fly-tipping) in Scotland in the past 15 years? My understanding is that this offence falls under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. For each conviction, can you say what punishment/disposal was given?

I am particularly interested in prosecutions/ convictions in the Highland Council local authority area. Can you please break the data down by region? Can you also specify the month and year of prosecutions and convictions? If possible, can you provide details of each person convicted for such an offence in the Highland region, including their age and where they were from at time of conviction, and where each fly-tipping incident took place?'

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.

Most of the information you requested is provided in the accompanying excel workbook.

Our records show that in 2015-16 the person convicted in Highland Local Authority was also a resident of this authority.

Data based on the local authority of the accused have only been available to us, and published, since 2015-16 and these have been badged as Experimental Statistics. Further explanantion about these statistics is available from our Criminal Proceedings in Scotland, 2016-17 bulletin available to view here http://www.gov.scot/Topics/Statistics/Browse/Crime- Justice/PubCriminalProceedings.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. The reasons why we don't have the information are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have all the information you have requested because

• Our data does not go lower than local authority level so we are unable to breakdown by regions within Highland Local Authority. The data provided to you is based on the location of the court in which the case is heard.

• Our data does not contain information about the location of individual offences.

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

FOI-18-00357 - information on flytipping last 15 years (tabulated).xlsx

File type

Excel document

File size

13.9 kB