Scottish Forestry - Actions carried out for women and lesbian, gay and bisexual people: FOI release

Information requested

1) Actions that you have carried out for women (as defined by the supreme court ruling in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers)1 in the calendar years 2015 to 2019? (please break that down by each calendar year ideally or fiscal year, and only if achievable within cost limit, the action taken and the amount spent on each action).

1 On 16th April 2025, in their ruling: ‘For Women Scotland Ltd vs The Scottish Ministers’, The Supreme Court concluded (at paragraph 264): “the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man… mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man.”

2) Actions you have carried out for (each and separately) lesbian,2 gay and bisexual people (each term as defined by the Supreme Court ruling in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers) broken down in the calendar years 2015 to 2019? (please break that down by each year, for these years) and only if achievable within cost limit, the action and the amount spent on each action.

2 On 16th April, 2025, in their ruling: ‘For Women Scotland Ltd vs The Scottish Ministers’, (at paragraph 206) “a person with same sex orientation as a lesbian must be a female who is sexually oriented towards (or attracted to) females, and lesbians as a group are females who share the characteristic of being sexually attracted to females”.

3) Copies of any funding agreements, or contracts, or other documents held by your organisation in this time period (2015-2019) with any LGBT organisation or organisation that has LGBT+ issues as its main focus, specifying the purpose of the funding.

4) The total amount of spend in this time period (2015-2019) for grants, funding, donations, contracts, or any other financial support, membership fees or subscriptions to LGBT diversity schemes or programmes provided by your authority to organisations that work with lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, ace, pan or intersex people or any other related or associated equality issues.

5) A breakdown, where held, of this spend for each year from 2015/2016 to 2018/2019 that you have on file. Ideally, please provide this broken down by calendar year. Please provide by fiscal year if you do not have it in calendar format.

6) A breakdown, where held, of this funding by recipient organisation, including their name, amount provided per year and a brief description of what it was for (including, but not limited to: mental health support, equality training and education, awareness raising initiatives, youth projects, sport or health services).

To emphasise: in each case for each of the above please only provide that which is achievable within the cost limit.

Please note: if your organisation does not categorise specifically for ‘LGBT’, then please include any funding to charities and third sector bodies where they have supporting LGBT people as a prime or major objective or where the spend might reasonably fall into this description from the above questions.

Examples of such organisations are, but are not limited to:
- LGBT Youth Scotland
- Equality Network
- Scottish Trans (Scottish Trans Alliance)
- Stonewall Scotland
- Any local LGBT groups and projects

Format

If the requested info is already available (in annual accounts or previous FOI requests) please can you direct me to it? I would like for this information to be sent in electronic format, ideally in a.xlsx file (spreadsheet) or table to aid clarity, if this is possible. Please note that I expect to be sent whatever can be produced within the FoI deadline, even if some material may take longer. Thank you for your assistance. I look forward to receiving your response in 20 working days.

Response

Scottish Forestry was established on 1 April 2019. It is the Scottish Government’s agency responsible for developing, supporting, and regulating forestry policies in Scotland. The Scottish Forestry’s records falling within the scope of your request, therefore, would be any recorded information for the period from 1 April to the end of 2019.

1) Actions that you have carried out for women (as defined by the supreme court ruling in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers)3 in the calendar years 2015 to 2019? (please break that down by each calendar year ideally or fiscal year, and only if achievable within cost limit, the action taken and the amount spent on each action).

3 On 16th April, 2025, in their ruling: ‘For Women Scotland Ltd vs The Scottish Ministers’, The Supreme Court concluded (at paragraph 264): “the words ‘sex’, ‘woman’ and ‘man… mean (and were always intended to mean) biological sex, biological woman and biological man.”

Please refer to Annex B and C for our response to this question.

2) Actions you have carried out for (each and separately) lesbian,4 gay and bisexual people (each term as defined by the Supreme Court ruling in the case of For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers) broken down in the calendar years 2015 to 2019? (please break that down by each year, for these years) and only if achievable within cost limit, the action and the amount spent on each action.

4 On 16th April, 2025, in their ruling: ‘For Women Scotland Ltd vs The Scottish Ministers’, (at paragraph 206) “a person with same sex orientation as a lesbian must be a female who is sexually oriented towards (or attracted to) females, and lesbians as a group are females who share the characteristic of being sexually attracted to females”.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, after conducting a thorough search across the organisation, I can confirm that we were unable to provide any information regarding part two of your request, as Scottish Forestry does not hold any information within the scope of part two. This is a formal notice under section 17(1) of FOISA informing you that Scottish Forestry does not hold the information you requested.

3) Copies of any funding agreements, or contracts, or other documents held by your organisation in this time period (2015-2019) with any LGBT organisation or organisation that has LGBT+ issues as its main focus, specifying the purpose of the funding.

Please refer to Annex C and D for our response to this question.

4) The total amount of spend in this time period (2015-2019) for grants, funding, donations, contracts, or any other financial support, membership fees or subscriptions to LGBT diversity schemes or programmes provided by your authority to organisations that work with lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, ace, pan or intersex people or any other related or associated equality issues.

Please refer to Annex C for our response to this question.

5) A breakdown, where held, of this spend for each year from 2015/2016 to 2018/2019 that you have on file. Ideally, please provide this broken down by calendar year. Please provide by fiscal year if you do not have it in calendar format.

Please refer to Annex C for our response to this question.

6) A breakdown, where held, of this funding by recipient organisation, including their name, amount provided per year and a brief description of what it was for (including, but not limited to: mental health support, equality training and education, awareness raising initiatives, youth projects, sport or health services).

Please refer to Annex C for our response to this question.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance, we are unable to provide some of the information you requested because exemption 38(1)(b) (personal information) applies, as does exemption 33(1)(b) (prejudice to commercial interest). You will be able to recognise where this information was redacted in Annex C.

Please refer to Annex A below for the reasons why these exemptions apply.

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.

FOI 202600506851 - Information released - Annex A - D

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1.7 MB