Information relating to felling at Woodilee Road site, Lenzie: EIR release

Information requested

1. Any information in relation to this alleged prosecution and fine […] relating to trees which were felled without authorisation at a site bounded by Woodilee Road, Eastergarngaber Road and Seven Sisters ornamental Gardens all Lenzie between 6th and 8th of March 2017. Further since that time part of the site has been subject of further applications.
2. Any information in relation to communication between East Dunbartonshire Council and Forestry Scotland in relation to the latest application TP/ED/22/0641.

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

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because an exception under the EIRs applies to some of the information you have requested.

The exceptions which apply are:

Regulation 10(4)(a), information not held. This exception applies because some of the information requested was not held by Scottish Forestry at the time of your request, as noted below.

Regulation 11(2), personal data relating to a third party, applies to some of the information you have requested. This information has been redacted in the attached document.

1. As noted in previous responses (our references 2021/00167827, 2021/00233013), the action taken by Forestry Commission Scotland, Scottish Forestry’s predecessor body, was the issuing of a formal warning and the agreement of a written undertaking regarding the replanting of the site with the developer (Muir Construction).

Neither Forestry Commission Scotland nor Scottish Forestry has undertaken any prosecution or imposed a fine regarding this case, and we are not aware of any prosecution or fine being imposed by others.

2. Scottish Forestry has not been formally consulted by East Dunbartonshire Council on the latest planning application and at the time of your request we had no correspondence regarding it on file.

Since your request, we contacted East Dunbartonshire Council to confirm whether we should have been consulted and whether they were aware of any prosecution or fine. Their response is attached to this release and indicates that:

• We were not consulted due to the similarities with the previous planning application.
• The Council has not undertaken any enforcement action or imposed a fine.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

Fw_ TP_ED_22_0641 - query from Scottish Forestry_Redacted

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