Information relating to Local Council decisions being appealed: EIR release

Information requested

Please provide the following information, in spreadsheet file format, by local authority, and by year from 2010 to present:

1. A list of types of local council decisions and rulings which are eligible to be appealed to Scottish Ministers, either directly or through intermediate appellate organisations.

2. For each category of local council decision and ruling (e.g. decisions on planning approval) eligible to be appealed to Scottish Ministers:
a. Number of appeals made.
b. Number of appeals agreed to be heard.
c. Number of appeals dismissed.
d. Number of appeals upheld.

Response

We requested clarification on 25 February, relating to your ask: it would be helpful to know whether you require statistics for information that relates to the appeal of planning applications, or do you require information relating to all appeal cases. This response was received on 25 February, confirming the following: “I would like statistics relating to all appeal cases please”

If I might firstly explain that, because, the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIR’s), 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.

For ease of reference I have attached a spreadsheet in the attached Annex, that covers both sections of your request.

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 202500453634 - Information released - Annex

File type

Excel document

File size

76.0 kB