River Endrick Catch Returns 2025: EIR release

Information requested

1. Submission Statistics: The total number of River Endrick fishery owners (proprietors) who successfully submitted a set of catch return figures to the Marine Directorate for the 2025 season.

2. List of Owners: A list of the names of the fishery owners/proprietors on the River Endrick who successfully submitted catch return information for the 2025 season.

3. Non-Compliance Rate: The percentage of River Endrick fishery owners currently held within the Marine Directorate's database who failed to submit the legally required catch return data for the year ending 2025.

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.

Please note that we need to respond to your request to reflect the information held at the time of the request.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(d) of the EIRs (unfinished or incomplete information) applies to the information you have requested was material which is still in the course of completion. Whilst the deadline for returns is the 31st December, we are processing returns throughout January and returns that arrive before 31st January will be entered into the database and the Official Statistics to be published in early May; returns received after 31st January are not added to the database nor included in the Official Statistics until the following year. This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release as part of open, transparent and accountable government. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that incomplete information which is still in being worked on is not disclosed when it might misinform the public or give a misleading impression of the Government’s view or position on the matter to which the information relates.

Additional information provided outwith the EIRs

Under section 9 of the EIRs (our duty to provide advice and assistance) we enclose information regarding 2025 catch returns from the Endrick Water SAC that were held on Monday 2nd February 2026, once we stopped accepting returns.

Please note that the Marine Directorate collects catch returns from the occupiers of salmon and sea trout fisheries (or their agents) and not only from the “owners”, as you requested; “occupiers” may be tenants or proprietors. Accordingly, we have interpreted your request as referring to occupiers of fisheries, whether they are the tenant or the proprietor. This also allows us to provide an answer for the third part of your query.

Please also note that we have interpreted your request for “catch return figures” as whether, or not, we have received a catch return irrespective of whether catch was reported. However, we have included information on whether the returns indicated that fishing took place or not.

The unknown owners of two fisheries are not “occupiers currently held within the Marine Directorate's database” and are not included in this response.

You should also be aware that fisheries are considered dormant when we have been notified that their occupiers do not fish, nor intend to fish for the foreseeable future; for these, a “NIL (not operated)” return is automatically recorded.

An 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 we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

The answer to your question is:

1. Submission Statistics: The total number of River Endrick fishery occupiers who successfully submitted catch returns to the Marine Directorate for the 2025 season was 18.

2. List of Owners: A list of the names of the fishery occupiers on the River Endrick who successfully submitted catch return information for the 2025 season are enclosed.

3. Non-Compliance Rate: The percentage of River Endrick fishery occupiers currently held within the Marine Directorate's database who failed to submit the legally required catch return data for the year ending 2025 was 5.3% (1 of 19).

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 202600501014 - Information released - 202600501014

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Excel document

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14.4 kB