Correspondence between Fish Health Inspectorate and Loch Duart PLC relating to sea lice levels: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for copies of any correspondence, emails, social media messages, texts or any other recorded information since 1 January 2024 between the Fish Health Inspectorate and Loch Duart relating to sea lice levels at any of the company’s salmon farms.

You further specified that the request was not concerned with personal information, or purely administrative information.

Response

In email communication with you, on 8 January 2026, we confirmed that routine weekly sea lice count data and associated communications, where all relevant information to the request was published, would not be required to be included within the response as this effectively amounted to administrative information.

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.

Please find attached relevant information with respect to your request.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) aplies 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 we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

Whilst we have applied this exception, we do recognise that your request did not ask for personal information, however this is present within the information being released and has been redacted as detailed.

Some of the information being provided to you relates to enforcement activity associated with sea lice and actions taken under the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007. With respect to that information, we can confirm that the conditions of the enforcement notices issued have been met to a satisfactory standard.

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 202500498800 - Information Released - Annex

File type

PDF

File size

3.0 MB