Planning and equalities policy on travelling communities: EIR release

Information requested

1. Any policy consultations, reviews, or internal briefing notes from 2015–2024 relating to planning reform, land access, or equality impact assessments that reference Showpeople communities in Scotland.

2. A record of funding allocations or refusals to projects involving Showpeople, particularly those connected to land acquisition or infrastructure development.

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 the information you requested within an Annex to this response and as separate attachments (which are detailed in the Annex).

While your request specifically refers to ‘travelling showpeople’, the definition of 'Gypsies and Travellers' in The Town and Country Planning (Development Planning) (Scotland) Regulations 2023 includes 'members of an organised group of Travelling Showpeople or circus people (whether or not travelling together as such)'. Accordingly, we have also provided information on ‘Gypsies and Travellers’ that may be relevant to travelling showpeople, as they are included as a subset of this broader group, for development planning purposes.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance some information has been withheld as explained in the Response Annex.

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 202500474159 - Information released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

3.1 MB