Forestry Grant Scheme: EIR release

Information requested

1. A full breakdown of all rural payments and/or payment commitments made to the Strone Estate, as identified in the map provided. This must include Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) Payments. 

2. A detailed breakdown of AECS payments, if any. 

3. The breakdown by each year, for the last ten years. 

4. The individual(s)/organisation(s) that these payments were for. 

5. A full explanation of any abbreviations used. 
    

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. 

Response

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

Business: Strone Estate 

Scheme	2014	2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022	2023
Single Farm Payment
Scheme	£18,358.46
Scottish Beef Scheme	£690.46
RP	£198,315.17	£17,691.02	£17,691.02	£17,691.02	£13,521.02	£17,691.02	£3,000.00	£3,000.00	£3,000.00	£3,000.00
LFASS*	£4,777.97	£4,486.73	£4,486.73	£4,617.14	£4,617.76	£3,693.21	£1,847.10	£4,617.76	£4,617.76
BPS		£15,477.59	£20,250.18	£25,157.20	£29,453.19	£32,942.65	£35,009.21	£35,280.70	£35,368.87
GR		£11,039.33	£12,860.53	£13,477.61	£13,494.31	£13,540.09	£13,934.44	£13,983.04	£14,031.77
SSBSS		£447.81	£1,997.60	£2,256.52	£1,755.48	£1,501.65	£1,410.06	£1,241.76	£912.80
Total:	£222,710.18	£49,142.48	£57,286.06	£63,199.49	£62,841.76	£69,368.62	£55,200.81	£58,123.26	£57,931.20	£3,000.00

*Note, LFASS scheme years 2019 and 2020 had a reduction to the payment rate to 80% and 40% of the 2018 payment rate respectively. 

 

RP	Rural Priorities
LFASS	Less Favoured Area Support Scheme
BPS	Basic Payment Scheme
GR	Greening
SSBSS	Scottish Suckler Beef Support Scheme

The information provided is the position as of the date of this letter.

The business does not have any commitments or payments for either FGS or AECS.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information in the format (ie. detailed breakdown) you have requested because an exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is information related to a sole trader which we consider personal information according to the definition of UK GDPR, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception. 

 

About FOI

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