Small Producer Pilot Fund: EIR Review

Information requested

Original Request 202500474577

• Can you please provide me with a full account of all spend from the Small Producer Pilot Fund, from its inception to date.
  Please show date, recipient, amount, action paid for and outputs so far. Please include the costs for SOAS and others to run the SPPF development, as well as subsequent spend on projects.
• Can you also please provide the current budget remaining for SPPF spend during the current financial year.
• Can you please also provide information on any bids, requests or allocation that have been made for funds to go to SPPF spend in future financial years.

Response

I have now completed my review of our failure to respond to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) for the following information:

• Can you please provide me with a full account of all spend from the Small Producer Pilot Fund, from its inception to date.
  Please show date, recipient, amount, action paid for and outputs so far. Please include the costs for SOAS and others to run the SPPF development, as well as subsequent spend on projects.
• Can you also please provide the current budget remaining for SPPF spend during the current financial year.
• Can you please also provide information on any bids, requests or allocation that have been made for funds to go to SPPF spend in future financial years.

In accordance with regulation 16(3)(b) of the EIRs, I have also reached a decision on your request.

Once again, I apologise for the delay in responding to your original request of 13 May 2025. This was purely down to human error.

I can now also provide our response to your original request.

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, I 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.

In response to your first question set out above:

Please find enclosed the relevant information you requested in the form of a summary of the total spend on the Small Producer Pilot Fund to date as of 22 July 2025. This includes the total costs for SAOS, QMS and Nourish who manage the Information Hub for small producers.  I have also listed the private kill abattoirs who received grant funding under the SPPF in the Financial year 2023/2024 and 2024/2025.

In response to your second question:

We do not hold this information  However, this Financial Year 2025-26 the Scottish Government are providing up to £1 million through our Small Producer Pilot Fund. This money will provide support for a new Small Producer Practical Training Fund which is being procured to give individuals,  organisations and businesses the ability to grow their skills and support increased business resilience.

In relation to your third question:

We are in the final session of the current Scottish Parliament and Scottish Ministers are unable at this time to provide information on budget allocation of Scottish Government funding for the SPPF in future years as we do not hold this information.

In response to your second and third question an exception under Regulation 10(4)(a) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (the EIRs) applies to the information you have requested. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have  the information you have requested. Therefore, we are refusing your request under exception 10.4(a) of the EIRs.

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. We recognise that there is a public interest in disclosing information as part of open and transparent government, and to help account for the expenditure of public money.

For your information, on 25 June 2025, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government announced the Financial Strategy and Delivery Plan which sets out a clear path to meeting these challenges through a whole-government effort which is available here. Scotland's fiscal outlook: medium-term financial strategy - gov.scot

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 202500474780 - Information Released - Annex

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