Red Rock Power Ltd and the Inch Cape Offshore Wind Farm: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
All correspondence between the Scottish Government (including Ministers, Civil Servants, and Special Advisers) and employees or representatives of Red Rock Power Ltd, concerning the Inch Cape Offshore Wind Farm, 1st May 2021 - date.
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
Under regulation 9 of the EIRs, we have a duty to assist and advise you. Therefore, we wish to advise you that there is very limited communication between the Scottish Government and Red Rock Power Ltd. in regard to the Inch Cape offshore wind farm in the time frame that you have requested. The majority of correspondence is between the Scottish Government and Red Rock Power Ltd’s subsidiary company, Inch Cape Offshore Limited (ICOL). ICOL is a joint venture company between Red Rock Power Ltd. and ESB Energy, set up to own and manage the Inch Cape offshore wind farm.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, under the exception at regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIRs, a public authority may refuse a request for information if it is ‘manifestly unreasonable’. The Scottish Information Commissioner’s guidance on the regulation 10(4)(b) exception at: EIRs exceptions | Scottish Information Commissioner (itspublicknowledge.info) says that there may “be instances where it is appropriate for the Commissioner to consider the roportionality of the burden on the public authority in terms of the costs and resources involved in dealing with a request when considering the application of this exception”.
A substantial volume of items were identified when searching the Scottish Government’s corporate record for information in-scope of this request. We have therefore decided, with advice from our Freedom of Information Unit, to narrow down your request to direct correspondence between the Scottish Government and Red Rock Ltd. However, we are declining the remaining part of your request, for all correspondence between the Scottish Government and representatives of Red Rock Ltd., under regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIRs – manifestly unreasonable.
As part of our response we will release all correspondence from the relevant time period between the Scottish Government and Red Rock Power Ltd. in regard to Inch Cape Wind Farm. We have withheld some further information under the EIR exception at regulation 11(2) - personal information of a third party. The reasons why both these exceptions have been applied can be found in the annex to this letter.
You may wish to consider reducing the scope of your request to make it manageable by reducing the time frame of your request. Alternatively, your request could be made more specific than all correspondence between the Scottish Government and Red Rock Power Ltd. and its representatives, to a correspondence about a particular issue. You may also find it helpful to look at the Scottish Information Commissioner’s ‘Tips for requesting information under FOI and the EIRs’ on his website.
Please also be advised that in instances where multiple copies of the same communication form part of the documentation being released in response to this EIR, we have redacted the duplicates for your ease of perusal. Due to the files being released in .pdf format you will not be able to open some of the attachment embedded into the files or open the links. However, we have extracted the files attached and these form part of our response. There is one link which I have relinked here for your viewing - Alba na Mara. Additionally, where there appear to be images attached to some of the email trails, in the vast majority of instances, these are branding images.
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.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrews House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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