Scottish Forestry paper purchasing policy: EIR release

Information requested

1. Is there a policy in place dictating what kinds of paper can be used for different purposes? If so please provide this.
2. How much paper has been bought and used by this organisation in each of the 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial, this should be broken down by year and office.
a. In relation to above, I would like a breakdown of the different types of paper purchased and the volumes and costs of each.

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.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested where it is available in Annex 2, in the format you asked for.

ANNEX 1
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
The Scottish Government does not have the 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. Scottish Forestry does not hold all the information/data you have requested relating to the amount and type paper bought.
This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about paper bought, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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-202000020103 - Information released - Annex 2

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1 page PDF

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56.9 kB