Publication - FOI/EIR release

Correspondence regarding Valve Site 14 and the Forties Pipeline System: EIR release

Published: 9 November 2020
Topic: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: FOI/202000081153
Date received: 26 August 2020
Date responded: 24 September 2020

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Information requested

You asked for:-

All correspondence pertaining to the property known as Valve Site 14 and/or the Forties Pipeline System, between Transport Scotland and BP (and vice-versa) between 1 January 2016 – 26 August 2020.
All correspondence pertaining to the property known as Valve Site 14 and/or the Forties Pipeline System, between Transport Scotland and Ineos (and vice-versa) between 1 January 2016 – 26 August 2020.
All internal communications such as emails, memos etc. within the employees of Transport Scotland regarding the above property between 1 January 2016 - 26 August 2020.

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 the information relevant to your request, as available to us and in the format you requested.

An 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 Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. 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.

The information withheld in the disclosed documents are personal details and signatures.

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