Costs incurred for the Kendoon to Tongland Reinforcement Project Public Inquiry: EIR release

Information requested

Please can you give me the costs incurred by the Scottish Government regarding the Public Inquiry to include the following:

Dates of procedures: pre-examination meeting (15 June 2022); five inquiry, seven hearing and one evening session (24 October 2022 to 28 November 2022 and 29 March 2023); various further written submissions (including five procedure notices); unaccompanied site inspections (August 2022 and 28 March 2023); and accompanied site inspections (30 November 2022 and 28 March 2023).

Response

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.

The information you requested is held in the table below. Please note that the DPEA were unable to separate the costs regarding the Pre examination meeting(s) which took place on 15 June in respect of both the Section 37 application(s) and relevant wayleave applications relevant to the overall projects. Therefore the costs for that element of the wayleaves is included in the costs detailed below.

Costs
Reporter time	£162,400
Venues	£8,387
Press Advert	£1,010
Travel and Accommodation	£4,692
Total	£176,489

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have information in respect of the costs of the case officer administrative element because this information is not collected by the DPEA.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about administrative costs such as these we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.