Salmon Fishery Districts catch figures: EIR release

Information requested

Do you plan to make catch figures available for individual SFDs or better for the rivers assigned an individual category which depended on its declared catch?” and for
“figures that enable the updating of the attached file”.

Response

The answer to your question is that due to Data Protection obligations we do not plan to release catch figures for all individual Salmon Fishery Districts, the reason for this is explained in the Annex. Catch figures used for river gradings are made available (where possible, in compliance with General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018) during the consultation on proposed gradings. The Conservation assessment for 2020 by river and assessment group is available on https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Salmon-Trout-Coarse/fishreform/licence/status/limits. You may be interested in a recently published EIR response available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202000042112/.

The enclosed file contains the published data in the format you requested. The data is by Reporting area for rod catch and region for net catch (which in some cases are a single district). The Annex explains why we have changed the geographical resolution we report some catch information.

ANNEX
REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION
Regulation 11(2) – applicant has asked for personal data of a third party

In publishing salmon and sea trout catches, including in response to requests under the Environmental Information Regulations, we are bound by data protection legislation. Under the General Data Protection Regulations and the Data Protection Act 2018 we understand that data (including salmon and sea trout catches) are personal where they relate, directly or indirectly, to a living individual, sole trader or small partnership. If we, or a third party, can relate data to an individual/sole trader/small partnership whilst processing it, then the data are considered to be personal data.

Some Salmon Fishery Districts and Assessable Areas have few active fisheries and therefore local knowledge can allow the catches of individual fisheries to be identified and enumerated. Therefore, the exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

In order to comply with our current understanding of the legislation, we cannot release salmon and sea trout catches where individual, sole trader or small partnership catch data can be deduced.

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-202000048203 Information released

File type

Excel document

File size

81.9 kB