Scottish Forestry screening opinions issued under EIA Regulations 2017: EIR release

Information requested

• The number of screening opinions issued by Scottish Forestry under the 2017 Regulations since 1 April 2019.
• The number of screening opinions where Scottish Forestry adopted an opinion that a forestry project was an EIA project.

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.

Response to your request

Please find attached a list of all afforestation applications which met the screening thresholds for Environmental Impact Assessment, broken down by Conservancy office and noting a) the hectarage of each application b) whether consent was deemed to be required. Please see our website pages on Environmental Impact Assessment for further information as to the thresholds and procedures.

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 202300387055 - Information Released - List

File type

Excel document

File size

39.4 kB