Screening opinions requiring Environmental Impact Assessment consent: EIR release

Information requested

According to a letter dated 4 July 2024 sent by Scottish Forestry to Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS) in respect of Scottish Forestry's failure to comply with the law by failing to publish screening opinions on its website (ESS ref: IESS.24.015), it states that:

Since 2017, 15 cases have had a screening opinion issued that stated EIA consent would be required.

Please could Scottish Forestry provide all 15 of these screening opinions with their respective detailed final species planting plans (that clearly shows what species are being planted), stating the location of each of these 15 proposed schemes and stating which two cases progressed to an EIA report, which case is ongoing, and which cases were withdrawn.

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.

The figure provided to Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS), in the correspondence of 4 July 2024, of 15 projects requiring EIA consent since May 2017 was subsequently found to be an overestimate. An exercise to collate, verify and publish details of historic EIA forestry screenings since 2019 was carried out in August 2024 and this identified that six forestry projects have been screened as requiring EIA consent since May 2017. The figure of 15 projects included some duplicate and incorrect entries that had been made to the IT system used to publish EIA decisions.

The Scottish Forestry (SF) website provides a spreadsheet record of historic EIA forestry screening decisions taken since 2017 which includes cases where EIA consent was required. Where consent was required, copies of the EIA screening decisions are normally also provided on the SF website.

The limitations of using Scottish Forestry’s current EIA case publishing system for generating reports was explained in the letter to ESS of the 4 July 2024. We are in the process of introducing a new EIA case management system which will capture and publish EIA screening decisions on the Scottish Forestry Public Register, and this is due to be launched later this year.

The information you have requested for five of the six projects is available on our website:- Scottish Forestry - Environmental Impact Assessment Consultations

These five projects, where the information is available on the Scottish Forestry website are: -

Acha-Bheinn	EIA Report Provided (the case is on-going)
Upper Largie Woodland Creation	withdrawn following the decision that consent was required
Cambusmore	EIA Report Provided
Eisg Brachaidh Estate	withdrawn following the decision that consent was required
Castlehill & Hillpark	withdrawn following the decision that consent was required

The sixth project, at Glenmeran, Lubreoch and Auch, was screened in December 2017 and withdrawn following the determination that EIA consent was required. The EIA Screening Opinion, Statement of Reason and maps submitted with the Screening Request are enclosed with this letter. 

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 regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information you have requested, and this information has been redacted in the attached documents.

Please see Annex A for the reason this exception applies.

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Personal data relating to third party

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

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 202500457692 - Information Released - Annex

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