Common Grazing Committees granted Business Reference Numbers: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/01467
Date received: 25 May 2018
Date responded: 7 June 2018

Information requested

1. Total number of Common Grazing Committees which have been granted Business Reference Numbers (BRN).

2. The total number of Common Grazing Committees which have had IACS applications validated as approved in the years 2016, 2017 and as at today's date for 2018.

3. The total combined value of payments made under the various schemes to those common grazing committees granted business reference Numbers

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

Total number of Common Grazing Committees which have been granted Business Reference Numbers (BRN) - 211 The total number of Common Grazing Committees which have had IACS applications validated as approved in the years 2016, 2017 and as at today's date for 2018. 2016 – 66
2017 – 71
2018 - 0

The remaining information you have requested is available from http://cap-payments.defra.gov.uk/. 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.

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