Isle of Colonsay estate correspondence regarding grant applications: EIR Review

Information requested

Original request 202500475612

All correspondence with the Isle of Colonsay Estate, PA61 7YU , its proprietor and other individuals and any agents acting for them in respect of grant applications and responses between January 1 2023 and today’s date.

Response

I have now completed the review of the Scottish Government's response to your request under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) dated 12 July 2025. I apologise for the delay in replying to you.

In your request of under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), you asked for a review since you believed the answer to your original request did “not properly apply the public interest test under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) and fails to recognise the overriding public interest in transparency regarding environmental management on Colonsay”

In your request of 12 July, you asked:

“Please supply me with all correspondence with the Isle of Colonsay Estate, PA61 7YU , its proprietor and other individuals and any agents acting for them in respect of grant applications and responses between January 1 2023 and today’s date.”

The Scottish Government’s answer was:

“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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide any of the information you have requested because exceptions under regulations Regulation 11 (2) for personal information (correspondence about individuals), and Regulation 10 (5) (f) for third party interest of the EIRs apply to that information.”

In my review I have found that the original request was handled appropriately under the correct Regulations, that is, Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs) and that the exemption applied under section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) was also correct. I also found that the public interest test was correctly applied as there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes.

In terms of the application of Regulation 11 (2) for personal information (correspondence about individuals), and Regulation 10 (5) (f) for third party interest of the EIRs apply to that information, I have found that your request for a review is upheld. In particular I have found that:

• the application of Regulation 11 (2) to all information held by the Scottish Government was not correct; some information held in relation to your original request may be released, with redactions under Regulations 11 (2) re-applied in order to protect personal information; and,
• Regulation 10 (5) (f) was not appropriately applied.

Information held that is releasable but with redactions to protect personal information is attached to this letter and consists of 13 documents.

For the information that is redacted or otherwise withheld in the response to your original request, I agree that the 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 it was not necessary or required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

With regard to the application of Regulation 10 (5) (f) in the response to your original request, my finding is that the application of this exemption was not necessary, since all the information held by the Scottish Government relating to your original request other than that release in f this letter is exempted under Regulation 11 (2).

In your request for a review you noted interest in the amounts of funding provided to agricultural and environmental purposes. Funding provided by the Scottish Governments under agricultural and related support schemes is published the fourteenth attachment to this letter provides a copy of the information that may be found for the farm businesses concerned. I would note that this information summary is not part of correspondence with either of the people or businesses referred to in the EIR request, it is information publicly available using the weblink below.

Defra, UK - CAP Payments Search

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 202500477588 - Information released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

4.2 MB