Details of financial support to Mossgiel Organic Farm: EIR release

Information requested

I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Please provide details of any financial support, funding, grants, subsidies, or other payments made by your organisation to Mossgiel Organic Farm, located in Mauchline (KA5 5LL), over the past seven years.

Specifically, I would like to request:
· The total amount of funding provided, broken down by year
· The type or purpose of each payment (e.g. agricultural subsidy, environmental scheme, business grant, contract payment, etc.)
· The dates on which payments were made
· The name of the scheme, programme, or funding mechanism under which the payments were issued

If this information is held in part by your organisation, I would be grateful if you could provide what is available and advise whether any other public authority may hold the remaining information.

If any of the requested information is exempt from disclosure, please provide an explanation citing the relevant exemption under the Act.

I would prefer to receive this information in electronic format.

Thank you for your assistance, and I look forward to your response within the statutory timeframe.

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.

A search for postcode KA5 5LL has identified one business, R & R B Cunningham, that has claimed and received rural payments in the last seven years.

Year	2019		2020		2021		2022
Scheme	Payment £	Date Paid	Payment £	Date Paid	Payment £	Date Paid	Payment £	Date Paid
BPS	£12,875.63	18/06/2020	£13,314.19	30/12/2020	£13,376.84	02/12/2021	£13,439.45	28/09/2022
GRN	£6,735.62	18/06/2020	£6,879.19	30/12/2020	£6,896.29	02/12/2021	£6,919.05	28/09/2022
AECS	£4,000.70	07/04/2020	£3,999.60	29/03/2021	£3,999.60	22/02/2022	£3,879.61	21/03/2023
TOTAL	£23,611.95		£24,192.98		£24,272.73		£24,238.11
Year	2023		2024		2025
Scheme	Payment £	Date Paid	Payment £	Date Paid	Payment £	Date Paid
BPS	£13,449.31	12/10/2023	£13,435.51	04/09/2024	£13,008.83	30/10/2025
GRN	£6,915.08	12/10/2023	£6,912.66	04/09/2024	£6,696.60	30/10/2025
AECS	£3,991.35	12/12/2023	£5,078.15	21/01/2025	£4,925.81	27/01/2026
TOTAL	£24,355.74		£25,426.32		£24,631.24
BPS	Basic Payment Scheme/Agricultural subsidy
GRN	Greening/Environmental subsidy
AECS	Agri-Environment Climate Scheme/Contractual Annual Recurrent Payment

You might also find this link: Defra, UK - CAP Payments Search, where rural payments are published, helpful. Please note data is currently available for the 2023 and 2024 EC financial years (16 October 2022 – 15 October 2023 and 16 October 2023 – 15 October 2024). Payments made in these EC financial years may relate to more than one scheme year. Any adjustments made in a subsequent financial year will not be included.

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.