Scottish Forestry - Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) woodland creation grants formula calculation: EIR release

Information requested

The formula Scottish Forestry apply to calculate the interest payments due on FGS woodland creation grants when they are reclaimed as a result of failure to fulfil the FGS contract terms.

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.

Scottish Forestry applies the following formula to calculate the interest payments due on Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) woodland creation grants when they are reclaimed as a result of failure to fulfil the FGS contract terms. The interest rate applied is the Bank of England base rate plus 1%.

Interest rate = Bank of England base rate + 1%

The Bank of England base rate is determined on the first day the repayment becomes overdue.

Scottish Forestry provides an interest free period of 60 days from the issue of the reclaim notice. FGS customers have 60 days to repay reclaimed funds before interest is charged.

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