Scottish fishing farm industry financial support: EIR release

Information requested

Details of financial support by way of (i) grants and (ii) loans, paid to the Scottish fish farming industry by the Scottish Government or its agencies for 2019 and up to 20 October 2020, broken down by operator.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the 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 can confirm that the information published in FOI 2019/0442 and EIR 2020/00017, is correct. However, request 2019/0442 was dealt with by our EMFF Team (under FOISA), and 20/00017 by our Aquaculture Policy Unit (under EIRs), resulting in a slightly different presentation of data. Response 2019/0442 included information not held by the Scottish Government but sought from Scottish Government agencies, while response 2020/00017 provided only information held by the Scottish Government, as there is no requirement under the EIRs to seek and issue information from other parties that we do not hold.

For the period 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2019

This information is in the response to EIR 2020/00017 at https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-20-0017/. Under the terms of the exception at 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, as detailed in Annex A.

For the period 1 January 2020 to 20 October 2020

Scottish Government (SG) support

Scottish Aquaculture and Innovation Centre (SAIC)
The table below shows payments to SAIC since FOI 2019/0442 https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00442/ was published:

Date	£
04/05/2020	£42,991.82
05/05/2020	£291,834.00
05/05/2020	£200,720.00

European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF)
Grant awards to the fin fish farming industry from the EMFF can be found at https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/grants-subsidies/awards. The table below updates the information given in both FOI 2019/0442 and EIR 2020/00017, broken down by operator:

Project Ref	Company	2018	2019	2020	Total
SCO1246	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	2,152	0	2,152
SCO1275	Dawnfresh Seafoods Ltd	53,292	0	0	53,292
SCO1349	Wester Ross Fisheries Ltd	196,088	536,597	60,145	792,830
SCO1439	Vementry Aquaculture	121,765	10,020	0	131,785
SCO1765	Invicta Trout Ltd	3,335	0	0	3,335
SCO2092	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	1,517	0	1,517
SCO2098	Invicta Trout Ltd	0	913	0	913
SCO2171	Highland Salmon Company Ltd	0	33,436	0	33,436
SCO2216	Kames Fish Farming Ltd	530,649	0	0	530,649
SCO2297	Selcoth Fisheries Ltd	0	35,000	0	35,000
SCO2355*	Dawnfresh Seafoods Limited	0	55,123	19,132	74,255
SCO2411	Selcoth Fisheries Ltd	41,765	0	0	41,765
SCO2633	Dawnfresh Seafoods Limited	0	0	168,600	168,600

* Shellfish Handling/conditioning facility & packing station project

Other Agencies

We do not hold details of any financial support given by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) or Nature Scot (formerly known as Scottish Natural Heritage). An exception under regulation 10(4) (a) of the EIRs (information not held), applies to this information, as detailed in Annex A.

As per the EIRs, I can direct you to agencies which hold relevant data. Nature Scot has informed me that it holds no relevant data, However, SEPA did not confirm that it holds no data, and if you wish you may contact the agency directly at: https://www.sepa.org.uk/contact/contact-us-by-email/.

I note you have made the same request directly to Highlands & Islands Enterprise (HIE) and Scottish Enterprise (SE) (covering the Scottish Investment Bank), and these agencies will respond to you directly. However, as HIE copied its 28 October response to you to the Scottish Government, and I attach it at Annex B. That request asked for details of salmon farming businesses only, so if you also wish details of trout farming businesses, you can contact HIE directly at https://www.hie.co.uk/contact/.

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-202000100758 - Information released - Annex A

File type

3 page PDF

File size

52.4 kB