Scottish Forestry record of alleged crimes: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for the following information:

It is understood that Scottish Forestry is a specialist reporting agency.

1. Please could Scottish Forestry provide the number of alleged crimes that have been reported by Scottish Forestry staff to Scottish Forestry since 1 April 2019.

Please could Scottish Forestry provide the number of alleged crimes that have been reported by members of the public, organisations or other bodies to Scottish Forestry since 1 April 2019.

2. Please could you provide the number of alleged crimes that Scottish Forestry has reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in Scotland since 1 April 2019.

3. Of this number of alleged crimes/reports received by the COPFS, how many resulted in court proceedings being brought by the COPFS?

4. Of this number of court proceedings, how many resulted in a successful prosecution?

5. Of this number of court proceedings, how many resulted in an 'alternative to prosecution', such as warnings, fiscal fines, compensation orders, fiscal work orders or any other action?

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.

We have responded to your request as numbered above.

1. Please could Scottish Forestry provide the number of alleged crimes that have been reported by Scottish Forestry staff to Scottish Forestry since 1 April 2019.

Please could Scottish Forestry provide the number of alleged crimes that have been reported by members of the public, organisations or other bodies to Scottish Forestry since 1 April 2019.

Scottish Forestry holds a record of alleged crimes around reports of alleged unauthorised felling. The information is not collated to distinguish by type of stakeholder responsible for submitting the alleged unauthorised felling report, however, records show that since 1 April 2019 there have been 660 reports of unauthorised felling under Section 23 of the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2019.

Scottish Forestry does not hold information in a collated format to provide the number of other alleged crimes reported to us, either under legislation we are the competent authority for, or crimes we have passed on to other agencies to investigate.

While 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)(a) of the EIRs  (Information not held) applies to the information you have requested.

Please see Annex A for the reason this exception applies.

2. Please could you provide the number of alleged crimes that Scottish Forestry has reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in Scotland since 1 April 2019.

Under the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018, Scottish Forestry have powers to carry out enforcement actions against landowners which can require them to restock (replant) land without the requirement to submit a report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Office. However, Scottish Forestry have submitted 2 reports to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal service for potential offences since 01 April 2019.

3. Of this number of alleged crimes/reports received by the COPFS, how many resulted in court proceedings being brought by the COPFS?

Of these two cases, the COPFS brought 1 case to court.

4. Of this number of court proceedings, how many resulted in a successful prosecution?

The case in question was cancelled by the judge, so there have been no successful prosecutions.

5. Of this number of court proceedings, how many resulted in an 'alternative to prosecution', such as warnings, fiscal fines, compensation orders, fiscal work orders or any other action?

No determination has been granted by the courts in any of these cases, Scottish Forestry have used enforcement action under the Forestry and Land Management (Scotland) Act 2018 in one of these cases under Section 36 of the Act.

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

10(4)(a) (Information not held)

Regulation 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (the EIRs) allows public authorities to refuse to make environmental information available if they don’t hold the information when the request is received.

“Held” is defined in regulation 2(2) of the EIRs. Environmental information is held by a Scottish public authority if it is –

(i) in its possession and it has been produced or received by that authority; or

(ii) held by another person on that authority’s behalf.

The exception is subject to the public interest test in regulation 10(1).

This exception is subject to the 'public interest test'. Despite not holding this information, we have a statutory obligation to apply this 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 in a collated format the number of other alleged crimes reported to Scottish Forestry, however, since Scottish Forestry do not hold the number of other alleged crimes reported to us in a collated format, either under legislation we are the competent authority for, or crimes we have passed on to other agencies to investigate, clearly we cannot provide information that 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.