Grants and funding awarded to Hunterston Estate: EIR release

Information requested

I would be grateful if you would supply me with a list of the grants awarded to Hunterston Estate from the year 1985 to the present.

These may include grants for the upkeep of the estate, Castle, House, heritage grants, agricultural and biodiversity awards, and any other funds, including loans which have been awarded for any purpose to the owners, trustees, their representatives or tenants.

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.

I am able to provide some of the information you have requested. The Rural Payments and Inspections Division (RPID) administer some agricultural and biodiversity payments and a search of the Rural Payment & Services system has identified one business, Hunterston Estates Limited, that has received agricultural payments. Payment details back to 1985 are not retained, however, I have detailed payments made to this business between 2015 and 2025 in the table below.

	Year
Scheme	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
BPS	£35,911.64	£42,045.65	£47,567.34	£51,252.24	£54,248.15	£56,795.07	£57,167.60	£57,397.87	£57,570.32	£57,514.01	£57,166.92
GRN	£21,643.06	£25,216.13	£26,477.47	£26,463.39	£26,543.79	£27,249.49	£27,352.65	£27,439.28	£27,474.12	£27,483.08	£27,310.84
LFASS	£23,544.94	£26,400.40	£26,481.02	£26,495.11	£21,184.95	£13,831.52	£26,457.20	£26,457.20	£26,530.90	£26,043.67	£25,982.25
Total	£81,099.65	£93,662.18	£100,525.83	£104,210.74	£101,976.88	£97,876.08	£110,977.45	£111,294.35	£111,575.34	£111,040.76	£110,460.01

BPS	Basic Payment Scheme
GRN	Greening
LFASS	Less Favoured Area Support Scheme

For awareness, BPS and Greening payments are based on entitlements and are not linked to a specific area of land (they are assigned to BPS payment regions), as such it is not possible to set out the specific amounts paid against specific land parcels. LFASS payments are calculated at business level and therefore some of the land may be out with the estate. Therefore, although we have provided you with a total payment amount, it is not possible to breakdown a payment value to a specific location. Full details of all schemes can be found at: All schemes.

We are unable to provide some of the information you have requested. Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not hold information relating to grants/payments administered by Historic Environment Scotland. Should you wish to submit a request to them, this can be done at: How to Request Information | Historic Environment Scotland | HES.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about habitat data, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.