Woodland Creation Payments and Woodland Improvement Payments: EIR release

Information requested

With regards to the Forestry Grant Scheme:

Please can you provide for each year since 2020:

• A list of schemes that have received Woodland Creation Payments, including the name of the landowner, the location of the land and the amount of grant received.
• A list of schemes that have received Woodland Improvement Payments, including the name of the landowner, the location of the land and the amount of grant received.

Response

Some of the information you have requested is attached to this response. Please note that as noted, claims under the WIG Habitat & Species - Natural Regeneration option will appear in both data sets as this is an option under the Woodland Improvement Grant that also delivers woodland creation.

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 regulations 10(4)(a) (Information not held at time of request) and 11(2) (Personal data relating to third party) of the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested.

This exception applies because grant recipients may be individuals or sole traders in addition to community groups, businesses, etc., and names of individuals and sole traders are considered personal data under regulation 11(2).

Additionally, our computer systems do not currently collate in summary form applicants as individuals/sole traders versus community groups/businesses/etc., so this categorisation is considered as information not held by Scottish Forestry. We have therefore redacted all business names and postcodes from the attached data, as we cannot be certain which records constitute personal data.

Regarding the locations of the land in question, the ‘property name’ field for each record provides a descriptor of each project. Maps of all grant claims are available on our Open Data Portal under “Forestry Grant Scheme Options & Claims”, and can be filtered by year using the “Filter Data” > approval_year option. Individual grant claims can be highlighted by opening the relevant data set and using the “Filter Data” > case_ref option; inputting the Case Reference for a record will highlight that land on the map.

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.

EIR 202300376641 - Information Released - Annex

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