Fishing for Litter Scotland project expenditure from the Marine Fund: EIR release

Information requested

A breakdown of expenditure for three grants from the Marine Fund to a project entitled "Fishing for Litter Scotland". This project has received a grant during the last three funding cycles; please include the following documents for each grant.

Please provide both the full profiled expenditure submitted with the grant application, as well as any reported actual expenditure to date during the run of the project or after it had concluded.

Where there were any additional documents or correspondence submitted by the grantee (for example justifying any change to estimated expenditure during or after the project), please include that also.

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.

I enclose a copy of most of the information you requested. Please find enclosed :-

- Annex A - 2022-2023 : a table with breakdown of expenditure showing full profiled expenditure submitted with the grant application, as well as any reported actual expenditure to date during the run of the project or after it had concluded.
- Annex A - 2023-2024 : a table with breakdown of expenditure showing full profiled expenditure submitted with the grant application, as well as any reported actual expenditure to date during the run of the project or after it had concluded.
- Annex A - 2024-2025 : a table with breakdown of expenditure showing full profiled expenditure submitted with the grant application, as well as any reported actual expenditure to date during the run of the project or after it had concluded.

• Document Item 1 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 2 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 3 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 4 - 2022-2023
• Document Item 5 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 6 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 6A - 2023-2024
• Document Item 6B - 2023-2024
• Document Item 7 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 8 - 2023-2024
• Document Item 9 - 2024-2025
• Document Item 9A - 2024-2025
• Document Item 10 - 2024-2025
• Document Item 11 - 2024-2025
• Document Item 12 - 2024-2025

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested because we no longer have access to the computer system where additional documents or correspondence submitted by the grantee for the year 2022-2023 were stored.

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 additional documents or correspondence submitted by the grantee in 2022-2023, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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 202500471006 - Information released - Documents

File type

PDF

File size

1.1 MB