Scottish Forestry - Information related to East Nethershield Woodland Application: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
The following Critical Public Interest Documents and Information.
1. Please issue all unredacted Documents issued and received within the Formal Woodland Application in 2024, which are stated to have formed part of the Public Accessible Documents for the Formal Consultation Period through the Public Regulated Due Process. As recorded previously, we will accept personal details being redacted, however as is clearly set out in the ScotGov Guidance Documents, ALL Woodland Application Documents must be made accessible for the transparent Public Consultation, allowing all Stakeholders to record their Targeted Responses. With the Documents, please provide the correspondence evidencing the date/s of issue and the communication of these Critical Public Consultation Documents to all Stakeholders and Consultees, including evidence when they were received as a Formal Application from the Applicant and then formally communicated to the Stakeholders and Consultees, and published on ScotGov Portal.
2. Please provide all internal ScotGov Correspondence and Communication on what Documents were to be issued on the EAI Portal in 2025.
3. Please provide all internal ScotGov Correspondence and Communication on what information had to be redacted from the Public Documents prior issuing in 2025.
4. Referring to the attached email extract, the comments within the email below item 3.03 and your clear refusal to provide the evidence supporting the serious accusations of "abusive behaviour". Please provide all internal ScotGoc communication and transcripts of the meeting/s noted in the attached email, which provides the evidence for ScotGov to attempt to accuse members of this community of being abusive.
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.
1. Please issue all unredacted Documents issued and received within the Formal Woodland Application in 2024, which are stated to have formed part of the Public Accessible Documents for the Formal Consultation Period through the Public Regulated Due Process. As recorded previously, we will accept personal details being redacted, however as is clearly set out in the ScotGov Guidance Documents, ALL Woodland Application Documents must be made accessible for the transparent Public Consultation, allowing all Stakeholders to record their Targeted Responses. With the Documents, please provide the correspondence evidencing the date/s of issue and the communication of these Critical Public Consultation Documents to all Stakeholders and Consultees, including evidence when they were received as a Formal Application from the Applicant and then formally communicated to the Stakeholders and Consultees, and published on ScotGov Portal.
An exception under regulation 11(2) and regulation 11(1) of the EIRs (personal information of the requester and personal information related to third parties) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data 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. As such, some data has been redacted. 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. You will find more information related to these exceptions below in Annex A.
An exception under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs (information already in the public domain) applies to some of the data you have requested. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website listed, then please contact me and I will send you a paper copy. Some of the information you have requested has already been published on the Scottish Forestry EIA Public Register under references EIA-95 and EIA-96.
I have a duty to provide advice and assistance under Regulation 9(1) of the EIRS and, as such, I would like to advise you that we have previously notified you that all relevant information related to this request is held on the public register. I would like to further remind you that we have provided guidance to you that a request for information is not a replacement for engaging in our complaints process and need to inform you that, although we will always comply with our responsibilities under EIRs and FOISA regulation, there are circumstances where we may refuse to disclose environmental information if the request for information is manifestly unreasonable. Although I have determined that your request for information is not manifestly unreasonable, I should inform you of what might be considered manifestly unreasonable in line with my duty to provide advice and assistance should a future request for this data be made.
According to Scottish Information Commissioner guidance, a request may also be manifestly unreasonable if:
(i) there is no additional information that can be provided because all relevant information has already been disclosed; or
(ii) it is unlikely that the additional information would shed light on, or alter, the requester’s situation (because the subject in question has already been thoroughly addressed through the relevant complaints or appeals procedure).
With the above guidance in mind, I have concluded that any further requests for information related to information already available EIA register would be manifestly unreasonable because it has already been provided and we have offered multiple opportunities to have the subject in question addressed via our complaint’s mechanism. We have also formally corresponded with you over 35 times, and have done so informally on a number of other occasions through telephone conversations and in person/online meetings, in relation to the subject therefore “it is unlikely that the additional information would shed light on, or alter, the requester’s situation (because the subject in question has already been thoroughly addressed”.
I had considered whether it would be appropriate to make the decision to apply an exemption under Regulation 10(4)(b) at this stage but determined that it might be more appropriate to advise you, again, that the information you are requesting is publicly available. As such, I decided, instead, to make an exemption under Regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs (Information already in the public domain).
You have the right to ask for a review of the information already supplied but do not have the right to have information already supplied or already in the public domain supplied to you again. By making the same request again in the future, we may have to decide that said request is manifestly unreasonable which could result in our refusal to disclose the information requested for that reason.
Further to that point, and in my duty to provide advice and assistance under Regulation 9(1) of EIRs, I must stress that you have the right to ask for a review of our decision to make any redactions including information held on the public register but you do not have a right to determine what information is redacted or withheld as our responsibilities in relation to what information is disclosed is determined by relevant legislation and guidance.
Scottish Forestry makes every effort to disclose as much information as possible and we apply a presumption in favour of disclosure unless the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by that in maintaining the exception. Referring specifically to your request, our position is that we have provided all information that we can reasonably provide. I have reviewed what has been published on the public register and found that information held there contains only minimal redactions and that these redactions are consistent with our obligations under the following regulations.
- Regulation 11(1) of the EIRs which sets outs when personal data can and cannot be disclosed under the EIRs. Redactions of personal information is justified in this case.
- Regulation 10(5)(g) of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (the EIRs) allows a Scottish public authority to withhold environmental information if its disclosure would, or would be likely to, cause substantial prejudice to the protection of the environment. In this case, the location of habitats or protected species.
- Regulation 10(5)(e) allows authorities to withhold information where disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the confidentiality of commercial or industrial information where such confidentiality is provided for by law to protect a legitimate economic interest. In this case, redactions have been made that would otherwise disclose the locations of private water supplies and disclose information related to the private business interests of local persons involved in or adjacent to the woodland creation scheme.
As such, any request for unredacted information that might run contrary to our duties to protect certain sensitive information would also be considered manifestly unreasonable as it would result in a request for the same information as has already been provided and could result in our refusal to disclose the information requested for that reason.
That said, if you feel that any information on the register should be disclosed without redaction, you have a right to request a review and should provide a clear and concise justification for why any information should be unredacted or fully disclosed. More information on your right to review can be found at the bottom of this letter.
I would like to make clear that you have a right to make a request for information under FOISA and under EIRs, however, the above is to advise how we might treat any request for information of this kind in the future.
We will treat all requests with the upmost care and consideration and will address each request on its own merit but I must advise, as I will explain later in this letter, that we have the ability to “reasonably conclude that a particular request represents the continuation of a pattern of behaviour which it has deemed manifestly unreasonable or vexatious in another context. It might, in those circumstances, decide the request can be refused as the continuation of the pattern of behaviour makes the latest request manifestly unreasonable”.
2. Please provide all internal ScotGov Correspondence and Communication on what Documents were to be issued on the EAI Portal in 2025.
An exception under regulation 11(2) and regulation 11(1) of the EIRs (personal information or the requester and personal information related to third parties) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data 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. As such, some data has been redacted. 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. You will find more information related to these exceptions below in Annex A.
3. Please provide all internal ScotGov Correspondence and Communication on what information had to be redacted from the Public Documents prior issuing in 2025.
An exception under regulation 11(2) and regulation 11(1) of the EIRs (personal information or the requester and personal information related to third parties) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data 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. As such, some data has been redacted. 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. You will find more information related to these exceptions below in Annex A.
4. Referring to the attached email extract, the comments within the email below item 3.03 and your clear refusal to provide the evidence supporting the serious accusations of "abusive behaviour". Please provide all internal ScotGoc communication and transcripts of the meeting/s noted in the attached email, which provides the evidence for ScotGov to attempt to accuse members of this community of being abusive.
Scottish Forestry does not hold the information you have requested. We are therefore refusing your request under Regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (Information not held).
You have made a request for Scottish Forestry to “please provide all internal ScotGoc communication and transcripts of the meeting/s noted in the attached email, which provides the evidence for ScotGov to attempt to accuse members of this community of being abusive”. Scottish Forestry is unable to provide data that it does not hold. No meeting or communication occurred in relation to the community you have referenced as a result of the email provided and referenced by you therefore it is not possible to provide transcripts of any meeting that did not occur. As such, an exception under Regulation 10(4)(a) of EIRs applies because we have confirmed that Scottish Forestry does not hold information requested.
The exception in Regulation 10(4)(a) is subject to the public interest test. While we recognise there is a public interest in transparency regarding these habitats, we cannot provide information that we do not hold. We have therefore concluded that the public interest in maintaining the exception outweighs the public interest in making the information available.
Under our duty to provide advice and assistance under Regulation 9(1) of EIRs, I would like to advise you of the context of the email you have provided which was disclosed as part of a previous EIR request to Scottish Forestry. This was an email between two members of Scottish Forestry’s Corporate Affairs team. The Corporate Affairs team have a wide-ranging remit which includes work on complaint management and providing guidance on policies related to Unacceptable Actions. At present, Scottish Forestry adopts the Scottish Government’s Unacceptable Actions policy which can be found here.
The email supplied as part of your request relates to that general work and is not specific to members of any community you have referenced. As that work is currently under development, it is exempt for disclosure under Regulation 10(4)(d) of EIRs – material in course of completion, unfinished documents or incomplete data.
This information has not been requested in this case as your request was specific to the email referenced to in your request but, were it to be requested, it is unlikely that it would be released. Although we recognise that there is some public interest in release as part of open, transparent and accountable government, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that unfinished or incomplete information which is still in being worked on or is under active consideration is not disclosed when it might misinform the public or give a misleading impression of Scottish Forestry’s view or position on the matter to which the information relates. It is also unlikely that any communications related to the development of this work would be released for the same reasons.
A letter was issued to you on 28 November 2024 which details the reasons why a decision was made to restrict engagement with you in line with Scottish Government’s Unacceptable Actions policy. I would like to stress that the decision to limit engagement was made in relation to you only and not to any other persons or community and would further point to multiple correspondences provided to you, particularly on 08 August 2025, where you have been advised of your right to raise a complaint should you be unhappy with that decision.
Under the same guidance from the Scottish Information Commissioners Officer that I pointed to earlier in this response, I had considered whether any suggestion by you to issue future requests of information for the same or similar information to all persons you feel are connected to the subject of your request has the potential to become manifestly unreasonable under Regulation 10(4)(b) of EIRs. I have determined that it is not possible to yet know if this would be the case as we will treat each request on its own merit, but I would like to provide some guidance and assistance to you should you choose to proceed with those requests.
When you make a request to multiple individuals who are members of staff of the same organisation for the same information, it might be worth considering that this could result in information not being disclosed as, although we will presume disclosure in all instances unless the public interest in making the information available is outweighed by that in maintaining the exception, we would not consider disclosing duplicate information and have the right not to do so. The effect of making multiple requests to multiple named persons for the same information could have other impacts on the requests as I will detail below.
Although I have determined that, at present, the two requests for information submitted have not yet met the threshold for being manifestly unreasonable, there are elements within each request, and in related correspondence which points to this request, that could be harassing in nature according to my interpretation of Scottish Information Commissioners Officer guidance.
“Even where a requester does not intend to cause inconvenience or expense, if the request has the effect of harassing the public authority and/or its staff, it may be deemed manifestly unreasonable when considered from the perspective of a reasonable person. The language and tone of a request may be relevant in assessing this.”
In making your most recent request for information, and in subsequent correspondence to Scottish Forestry related to this and another request, you have made multiple requests to meet with Scottish Officials. In doing so, I have inferred that requests for information you have made are, in part, a result of Scottish Forestry officials’ decision not to meet with your further on the subject that is at the centre of this request.
“We could have met and talked openly about all the facts in this case over the past 2-3 years, but you chose not to. We are disappointed with the decisions that have been made on this case and will continue to record the facts and evidence until it concludes to the satisfaction of the Scottish People”.
You have alluded to making further requests if you are not satisfied with the response in this and another request and suggested that further requests will be submitted.
“We wait for the full transparent response to the 2 current FOIR and will then review and consider all other FOIR required to obtain the full transparent evidence on this Public Interest Case”.
“We will now issue FOIR requests to all Government Departments and all those involved in this case for us to obtain all the outstanding information that will form part of the formal complaint to our government”.
And you have made comments that are addressed to individuals that are accusatory in nature.
“Your comments again seriously misrepresent the truth and disrespects the Public”.
Although our aim is to treat each request for information on its own merit, it is sometimes important for a public authority or body to consider a pattern of behaviours when addressing any request. I would like to point you to the below guidance from the Scottish Information Commissioners Officer.
“An authority could reasonably conclude that a particular request represents the continuation of a pattern of behaviour which it has deemed manifestly unreasonable or vexatious in another context. It might, in those circumstances, decide the request can be refused as the continuation of the pattern of behaviour makes the latest request manifestly unreasonable. This may arise, for example, where a requester has an on-going grievance against a public authority, or could reasonably be described as conducting an extended campaign to the point that their behaviour can be described as obsessive.”
I would, therefore, ask you to refrain from making statements towards or about any individual member of staff at Scottish Forestry or Scottish Government or from relitigating issues that should be addressed through our complaints handling policy when making future requests. It would be helpful if you could limit your request to only specifying what information you would like access to. Should you do so, it is unlikely that we would need to consider whether a request is manifestly unreasonable as having “the effect of harassing the public authority and/or its staff”.
To enable you to do this, I would ask that all requests for information go to the Corporate Affairs team through the Scottish Forestry FOI request mailbox. You do not need to make contact with any other Scottish Forestry Official and doing so may be interpreted as continuing a pattern of behaviour that has “the effect of harassing the public authority and/or its staff” because I am advising you that it is unnecessary when all requests for information and any complaint you might wish to raise can be handled, in the first instance, by the Corporate Affairs team whose remit includes both complaints management and requests for information. Scottish Forestry has made it clear that any other correspondence may not receive a reply unless it relates to a new subject and that other forms of engagement have been limited in line with Scottish Government’s Unacceptable Actions policy.
I would further ask that you do not respond to any acknowledgment of your requests with comments that are out of scope of the original request or go into matters not relevant to the request at hand. In response to our acknowledgement of having received this request, you made statements related to ongoing issues you have had with the woodland creation scheme that this request is the subject of. These comments were not related to the specific request for information but were about matters outside of the scope of EIRs regulations such as a request to meet with Scottish Forestry Officials, detailing circumstances around previous meetings with Scottish Ministers and highlighting correspondence with Members of Scottish Parliament as well as other information that is not relevant to the request of information you have submitted.
You are, of course, welcome to contact us to ask for clarification on a request or to provide specific guidance on how we might interpret a request but, when you add irrelevant information, it makes the request difficult to consider and will add a burden to Scottish Forestry staff because we will then have to consider the new information that has been submitted and determine next steps which will inevitably make responding to your request more difficult.
Although I have determined that your request for information, on this occasion, is not manifestly unreasonable, I am using this opportunity to advice you that, should you make requests in the future that include information that attempts to relitigate matters we have considered resolved and, for which, have encouraged you to make a complaint for if you remain dissatisfied, it would become reasonable for Scottish Forestry to consider that your requests for information are linked to these correspondences and are part of a pattern of behaviour. And, as we have already determined that future correspondence with us will be restricted in line with Scottish Government’s Unacceptable actions policy due to behaviours we have detailed in previous correspondence to you, we may need to consider whether future requests for information would become manifestly unreasonable as they may be perceived as the continuation of the pattern of behaviour that makes the request manifestly unreasonable.
Scottish Forestry remains committed to fulfilling our statutory obligations under the EIRs and FOISA. We trust this information clarifies the position of Scottish Forestry. Should you have any new inquiries regarding forest policy or regulation that have not been previously addressed, we would be pleased to consider them. We look forward to assisting you with any future requests for information that are specific, clear, and submitted in accordance with the guidance provided above.
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