Information regarding replanting of trees in local authority area: EIR release

Information requested

1. Information about the written undertaking received by your organisation from the landowner Marston's Estates Ltd.

2. Information in respect of what progress your organisation has made since 2017 to secure the replanting.

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.

1. Forestry Commission Scotland’s written undertaking was with Muir Construction as a Developer of the site. This written undertaking has already been provided under a previous FOI request reference number 2021/00167827. There has been no correspondence with Marston's Estate Ltd. For completeness since 1 April 2019 forestry became fully devolved and Forestry Commission Scotland (and it’s work in Scotland) became the executive agency Scottish Forestry, accountable to Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Parliament.

2. In addition to the written undertaking referenced in 1, Forestry Commission Scotland and Scottish Forestry (SF) has submitted observations to the planning authority on four separate planning applications in relation to the Woodilee site. If approved, Scottish Forestry considered that each would have discharged the earlier undertaking.

In 2020, Scottish Forestry was made aware that Dawn Woodilee Ltd were the new landowner. Scottish Forestry wrote to Dawn Woodilee asking them to take on the written undertaking. No response was received. With the exception of the letter to Dawn Woodilee Ltd, the following information can be found in the public domain on East Dunbartonshire Council planning search at Simple Search (eastdunbarton.gov.uk)

FCS Observations on TP_ED_17_0885
Planning Response TP_ED_17_0885
20200805 Request For Observations on Application No. TPED200405
FW TPED180292 - Marstons Hotel Lenzie
RE Request For Observations on Application No. TPED200904 3 No
20200827 Undertaking Letter Dawn Woodilee Ltd

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exceptions under the following regulations 6 (1)(b) of the EIRs (Form and format of information) applies to the following information. This information is already publicly available and easily accessible to the applicant in another form or format.

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.