Funded acres of woodlands have been restored or created: EIR release

Information requested

How many acres of woodlands have been restored or created with Scottish Government funding in the period 1 September 2021 to the present day?

How many acres of woodlands have been restored or created by Scottish Forestry in the period 1 September 2021 to the present day?

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.

This response should be read alongside our response to a previous similar request which can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202200314989/

Please note that for the purposes of this response, we have assumed “the present day” to refer to the date of your request, i.e. 20 September 2022.

How many acres of woodlands have been restored or created with Scottish Government funding in the period 1 September 2021 to the present day [20 September 2022]

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 an exception under regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (Information not held) applies to some of the information you have requested.

This exception applies because your query asks for the amount of woodland created with all Scottish Government funding. While Scottish Forestry leads on the disbursal of woodland creation grants to private individuals and businesses on behalf of the Scottish Government, there may be activities by other Scottish Government departments, agencies, or public bodies that result in the creation or restoration of woodland.

We therefore cannot guarantee that our activities cover all woodland created or restored with Scottish Government funding, and we do not hold information on woodland creation or restoration over the period given other than that resulting from our own activities, beyond that included in the previous release linked above.

Notably, Forestry & Land Scotland leads on the management of Scotland’s publicly-owned forests and land on behalf of the Scottish Government, so you may wish to contact them at freedomofinformation@forestryandland.gov.scot for figures relating to woodland creation and restoration under their purview.

For information on woodland creation and restoration by Scottish Forestry via the Forestry Grant Scheme, please see our response to the second part of your request below.

How many acres of woodlands have been restored or created by Scottish Forestry in the period 1 September 2021 to the present day [20 September 2022]

Scottish Forestry collates and publishes woodland creation and restoration data on a monthly basis. As a result, we are only able to provide data through to 31 August 2022, as this is the most recent monthly publication prior to 20 September.

Please note that for the purposes of the following figures we have interpreted ‘restoration’ of a woodland to mean the restocking / replanting of woodland after timber harvesting.

By that definition, Scottish Forestry was responsible for 4,710 hectares (11,639 acres) of woodland restoration and 9,414 hectares (23,263 acres) of woodland creation via the Forestry Grant Scheme between 1 September 2021 and 31 August 2022, this being the last complete reporting period prior to 20 September 2022.

Updated figures are published monthly at https://forestry.gov.scot/publications/support-and-regulations/forestry-grant-scheme/forestry-grant-scheme-statistics, and figures for specific time periods can be derived as follows:

• Sorting by date > descending will highlight the most recent publication.
• Table 8, Claimed Woodland Creation Options by Claim Year, provides calendar-year and year-to-date figures for woodland creation. Figures for other periods can be derived by sourcing the publications for the period start month and the period end month and subtracting accordingly. For example, for the period September 1 2021 – August 31 2022, the August 2021 publication gives a year-to-date figure for 2021 through to 31 August, which can then be subtracted from the year-end figure for 2021 available in subsequent publications to give a figure for September - December. The result can then be added to the year-to-date figure for 2022 in the August 2022 publication to give the September 21 - August 22 figure.
• Table 7, Claimed Options (authorised and paid or in process of payment), provides calendar-year and year-to-date figures for restocking against the line ‘WIG RR’. Figures for other periods can be derived in similar manner to the above.

Please note that these figures do not include restocking undertaken without funding from the Scottish Government. It is a condition of most tree-felling permissions that the area felled must be restocked with replacement trees, unless specific reasons apply; however, this restocking may be undertaken by the private landowner without recourse to public funds.

Additionally, official statistics on woodland creation on both public and private land across the UK, including previous years, are published by Forest Research and available here.

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.