Information regarding publication of rural payments: EIR release

Information requested

Rural payments in Scotland used to be published on DEFRA's CAP Payments database https://cap-payments.defra.gov.uk/Default.aspx but the last year that happened was for 2024 and DEFRA has announced the website will close in May 2027. While the website states 'The UK Government remains committed to full transparency in the use of public funds, including the publication of details about all payments made under the CAP' I can find no information about what new arrangements have been put in place by either the UK or Scottish Governments to make this information available in future. I would be grateful if you could either point me to where this information is now publicly available or explain what plans the Scottish Government has to do so.

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.

We can confirm the Scottish Government remains committed to full transparency in the use of public funds, including the publication of details about all payments made under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) legacy schemes still in operation in Scotland.

Following the decision of the UK Government Defra to close their website for publishing CAP beneficiary data on a UK basis, we have introduced and passed the Rural Support (Simplification and Improvement) (Data Publication) (Scotland) Regulations 2025 (the “2025 Regulations”) that came into force on 1 January 2026 to make our own arrangements for Scotland.

The 2025 Regulations will enable the CAP beneficiary data for Scotland to be published by 30 June each year for the preceding financial year and to remain available on the Scottish Government website for two years from the date of their initial publication.

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.