Publication - FOI/EIR release

Single Farm Payment Scheme 2005 National Reserve Investor Category: FOI release

Published: 27 September 2019
Directorate: Agriculture and Rural Economy Directorate
Topic: Farming and rural, Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/19/02037
Date received: 2 August 2019
Date responded: 26 September 2019

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Information requested

1. Single Farm Payment Scheme, 2005 National Reserve, Investor Category

How many applications were submitted under the Investor Category?
How many of these were successful and at what stage were they successful?
How many were unsuccessful?
What were the reasons/grounds for the approval or rejection?

2. Single Farm Payment Scheme, 2005 National Reserve, Investor Category, Alternative Approach to Investment

How many applications were submitted under the Investor Category, Alternative Approach to Investment?
How many were successful and at what stage were they successful?
How many were unsuccessful?
What were the reasons/grounds for the approval or rejection?

3. Any written rules or criteria relevant to assessment of an application to the National Reserve 2005 under the Investor Category?
4. Any transcript or authority which refers to force majeure or exceptional circumstances being required in an application to the National Reserve 2005 under the Investor Category?

Response

Part 1 of response - issued 2/09/2019:
For questions 1 and 2, we apologises that we cannot provide you with a complete response at the moment because the information from 2005 is held in complex legacy systems. We received an approximate number of 4,000 applications for National Reserve for the Invesments category in 2005. We are trying to collate and assess the information from our 17 Area Offices and our legacy systems, in order to get with an accurate response for you.
Under section 10(1) of FOISA, our response to your request is due on 02/09/2019. I apologise for this delay and hope to be able to send you a response shortly.
The information you have requested in question 3 and 4 is available from the Scottish Government website Publications in 2005. Information leaflet 11 – National reserve 2005
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/01/20599/51134
Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.
Also I am attaching additional guidance in your partial response.

Part 2 of response - issued 26.09.2019:
Firstly, apologies for the delay of this request.
We already have provided you with a partial response to your questions 3 and 4 on 02/09/2019.
The answer to your question 1 is that we received 3,908 applications under Investor Category for the National Reserve scheme in 2005. This total includes withdrawn, eligible and not eligible applications.
Unfortunately this figure cannot be broken-down due to the way that this information is held in the old and complex IT system, and the difficulty to interpret results from that aged scheme.
You can find the reasons for the approval or rejection of the application in the guidance provided in the previous response.
The answer to your question 2 is that records held in paper copies in Area Offices for the Alternative Approach to Investment have been destroyed following the Scottish Government retention periods, and unfortunately those weren’t processed in the old IT system.
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 in the Annex to this letter.

ANNEX
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
Section 17(1) of FOISA (information not held) requires the Scottish Government to notify you if it does not have the information you requested. The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because of the way that this information is held in the old and complex IT system, and the difficulty to interpret results from that aged scheme.
Also some of the information requested is not held because has been routinely destroyed as part of the Scottish Government records management retention policy.

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