Publication - FOI/EIR release

Community Wind Power correspondence: FOI release

Published: 23 February 2026
Directorate: Energy and Climate Change Directorate
Topic: Energy, Public sector
FOI reference: FOI/202500494292
Date received: 17 November 2025
Date responded: 23 December 2025

Information request and response under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Information requested

Could I please have sight of all correspondence between Kate Forbes/the office of Kate Forbes, as Cabinet Secretary and DFM, and the organisation Community Wind Power?

Could I further have any correspondence from or to Ms Forbes that relates to Prestwick Airport?

Finally, could I have sight of any correspondence between the Scottish Government and Jim Walker?

Response

Please find below responses to Points 1 & 3 of your request, with Point 2 being dealt with under the separate case reference of 202500494468.

Regarding Point 1, the information you have requested is contained in Annex A (1-4).

Please note, some of the information you requested has been withheld as an exemption under section 38(1) (b) (personal data) of FOISA applies to that information, this is 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 exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

Also, Under section 25(1) of FOISA, we do not have to give you information which is already reasonably accessible to you. In particular, the document ‘Scoop Hill Community Wind Farm – Commitment to Communities’ is already available for viewing via the Scoop Hill Wind Farm website.

Regarding Point 3, we are unable to respond to the request for all correspondence between the Scottish Government and Jim Walker as this is exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 ‘excessive cost of compliance’. The search of our records that we conducted resulted in a vast number of documents due to there being no indication of a topic or timeframe. The number of different roles and professions that Mr Walker has held over a long career, would mean that a Scottish Government wide search would be required to be sure of accuracy of what is held within Scottish Government records. This would be in addition to the interrogation that would be needed to ascertain which documents are in the scope of this request. You may wish to send another request for correspondence between the Scottish Government and Jim Walker with a narrower scope, by including a specific topic and timeframe.

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.