Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) regulations and register: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004
Information requested
1. Copies of all the guidance, template documents, checklists and any other documents used by RPID to make screening opinions under the 2017 EIA Regulations.
2. All information held in respect of the referencing system which is used to allocate reference numbers to entries on RPID’s public EIA register.
Response
I have attached redacted copies of all internal guidance, template documents, checklists used by RPID to make screening opinions under the 2017 Agricultural Land, Drainage, and Irrigation Projects Environmental Impact Assessment (ALDIP EIA) regulations.
In your submission you noted in your background information that the reference numbers from 2023 onwards are significantly higher than the number of entries on the public register. This is because the ALDIP EIA regulation 21 requires us to publish certain information, but we also process cases that the regulation doesn’t require us to publish. These cases are described at page 5 section 1 of the attached internal guidance, in short:- complaints or breaches we find at inspection. We give them a reference number so we can effectively administer these cases, but the EIA regulation does not require us to put these on the Public Register.
In addition to complaints and breach cases we occasionally receive a screening application for something that doesn’t require an ALDIP EIA screening opinion for example farm tracks with require an Application for Prior Notification and Prior Approval to the Local Authority. These cases are referred to Local Authority, no ALDIP EIA screening opinion is given so they do not appear on the ALDIP EIA public register.
Hopefully the above explains clearly why the sequential reference numbers are higher than the total number of entries published on the register.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG