Scottish Forestry gender and specific demographic groups queries follow up: FOI release

Information requested

1. What your organisation understands the word ‘woman’[1] to denote.

2. What your organisation understands the terms: lesbian, bisexual and gay to denote?

3. 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) in the last 5 years. Please break that down the amount spent by each calendar year, please provide by fiscal year if you do not have it in calendar format, please include data for 2026.

4. 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) in the last 5 years? (please break that down by year, for the last 5 years and this calendar year) and only if achievable within cost limit, the action taken and the amount spent on each action.

5. Copies of any funding agreements, or contracts, or other documents held by your organisation in the last 5 years with any LGBT organisationor organisation that has LGBT+ issues as its main focus, specifying the purpose of the funding.

6. The total amount of spend in the last 5 years (from 2020 up to the present day) 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.

7. A breakdown, where held, of this spend for each year from 2020/2025 to 2025/2026. Ideally, please provide by calendar year. Please provide by fiscal year if you do not have it in calendar format.

8. A breakdown, where held, of this funding by recipient organisation, including their name, amount provided for each year from 2020/2025 to 2025/6 and only if achievable within cost limit 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 spreadsheet or table to aid clarity, if this is possible.

Response

Following our response sent on 12 February 2026 regarding your information request with the reference number 202600501731, I am writing to inform you that additional information has been found within Scottish Forestry’s records.

We apologise for not including this information in our response. The initial triage email was sent to the entire organisation, including the conservancies. Several officers contributed, and their inputs were incorporated into the original response to you. However, one officer did not search for the term “women” because the request under point 3 was for “actions carried out for women”, not for financial expenditure on projects. To ensure completeness, the officer searched for expenditure on projects targeting women.

Annex B (documents 1 to 8) provides the relevant information relating to your point two: 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) in the last 5 years. Please break that down the amount spent by each calendar year, please provide by fiscal year if you do not have it in calendar format, please include data for 2026.

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 B.

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

ANNEX A

REASONS FOR NOT PROVIDING INFORMATION

Section 38(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) — (Personal Information)

An exemption under Section 38(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you requested, particularly in Annex B because it contains personal data such as names and contact details of individuals, which are exempt from disclosure under section 38(1)(b) (personal information).

Section 38(1)(b) applies when releasing the requested information would breach the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the GDPR. This exemption is absolute and not subject to the 'public interest test', so there is no need to assess whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption.

Section 33(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) — (Prejudice to commercial interest)

An exemption under Section 33(1)(b) of FOISA applies to some of the information you requested, particularly in the documents released as Annexes B because it contains invoice numbers, bank account numbers or other internal financial sensitive data of third parties, which are exempt from disclosure under section 33(1)(b) of FOISA (the commercial interest). The disclosure of this kind of commercially sensitive information about a contracted suppliers of services would, or would likely to substantially prejudice the commercial interests of the company and Scottish Forestry as the interested party.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’, and we have a statutory obligation to apply this test. Therefore, considering all the circumstances of this case, we have assessed whether the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption. We have concluded that, on balance, the public interest supports upholding the exemption. While we recognise there may be some public interest in releasing all the information to ensure full transparency, this interest is outweighed by the need to allow the business in question to operate without the threat of financial loss or the release of sensitive financial data to competitions or third parties, which could harm its profitability, Scottish Forestry and the taxpayer.

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 202600507318 - Information released - Annex B

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