Sewage overflow incident at Loch Leven: EIR release

Information requested

Please provide me with a copy of the information that the Minister for Environment and Land Reform received from SEPA in regards to an sewage overflow incident at Loch Leven on 8th September which the Minister referred to during the Sewage and Scotland’s Water Member’s Business Debate on 26th October 2022.

Please include all internal correspondence, briefings from SEPA, phone calls, handwritten notes or other relevant documentation.

Response

I note that your original request referred to Freedom of Information legislation. 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 attach a copy of the information you requested.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some the information
requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data
protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the
Data Protection Act 2018. 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.

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 202200328169 - Information released

File type

18 page PDF

File size

194.3 kB