Planning appeals received against local authority decisions: FOI release

Information requested

How many times the Scottish Government Reporter has accepted appeals by property developers against local authority decisions for the past four years please – can you include the reporter’s letter please on each occasion

You then clarified that you just wished the information to include only planning appeals; developments of 10 houses or more; and for the last four calendar years only.

Response

If I might firstly explain that, because, the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIR’s), 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.

Response to your request:

Please find attached, a breakdown of the 75 appeals for 10 or more houses submitted by property developers, that have either been allowed or allow in part from 01/01/2018 to 31/12/2021.

As the relating information is already in the public domain, we are applying the exception under 6(1)(b) of the EIRs. For this we are supplying the link to our website below, to allow you to access the information. Once the website is accessed, you will be in a position to find the relevant appeal, by clicking on the Search button (2nd from the left on the toolbar), Simple Search, Search by case reference, type in the appeal reference number, click on the highlighted element that is shown and then scroll down to the decision/outcome tab to view the decision that has been made. Scottish Government - DPEA - Case List (scotland.gov.uk) If however you are unable to access the cases in this way, please make contact us.

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 202200316060 - Information released

File type

Excel document

File size

14.7 kB