Stobo woodland creation scheme inspection: EIR release

Information requested

In relation to the Stobo woodland creation scheme 23FGS74574, please could you address the following questions and provide the requested information:

1. Has Scottish Forestry decided to inspect the site for work carried out so far? If not, why not, given that Scottish Forestry is the regulator for forestry? If yes, please provide a detailed inspection report, showing all contractual and UK Forestry Standard breaches.

2. Has Scottish Forestry notified RPID of the herbicide spraying that occurred on site in 2023? If not, why not?

3. Please provide all correspondence between Scottish Forestry and all third parties (including RPID) as well as internal communication between Scottish Forestry staff, including documents, emails, forms, maps and other items of information since 27 August 2024.

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.

In relation to the Stobo woodland creation scheme 23FGS74574, please could you address the following questions and provide the requested information:

1. Has Scottish Forestry decided to inspect the site for work carried out so far? If not, why not, given that Scottish Forestry is the regulator for forestry? If yes, please provide a detailed inspection report, showing all contractual and UK Forestry Standard breaches.

There has not been a formal inspection of this site, therefore we do not have a inspection report to issue. Although there have been informal site visits by staff members, the reason that this site has not had a formal inspection is that those are done in advance of claim payment to check that the claim matches what has been done on the ground and is in line with the contract requirements. Whilst a claim has been made, this has not been paid due to the fact that the grant contract was reduced through a court process linked with the Judicial Review as referred to on our website: https://www.forestry.gov.scot/news-releases/scottish-forestry-halts-forestry-work-at-stobo-over-new-information

2. Has Scottish Forestry notified RPID of the herbicide spraying that occurred on site in 2023? If not, why not?

We can confirm that we sought the views of the Rural Payments and Inspections Division (RPID) last year on the herbicide spraying that occurred on site in August 2023.

3. Please provide all correspondence between Scottish Forestry and all third parties (including RPID) as well as internal communication between Scottish Forestry staff, including documents, emails, forms, maps and other items of information since 27 August 2024.

This correspondence comprises two categories:

• Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. In the below we have provided you with the relevant links to access this information. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the webpages listed then please contact us again and we will send you a paper copy.

Correspondence between Scottish Forestry and third parties from 1 July 2024 to date has already been partially released under the EIR with reference EIR/202400439411 as              published online on 20 January 2025: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400439411/,

• For the remainder of your request, whilst our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide the information you have requested because an exception under regulation 10(4)(b) (Manifestly unreasonable requests) of the EIRs applies to the information you have requested, due to the high number of records covered by your request and therefore the high burden of collating and presenting the information. The reason why this exception applies is explained in the Annex to this letter.

Please see Annex A for the reason(s) this/these exception(s) apply.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202500448931 - Information released - Annex A

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