Rural payments paid to land within boundary map: EIR release

Information requested

You have provided a map and requested information on the rural payments paid to the land within the boundary of this map. You have also requested information on how much of this land is claiming rural payments, in hectares.

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 have now completed my search and identified one business, A & F Skene, claiming land within the map area provided. The payment information is provided on a separate spreadsheet. Payments made under the Rural Priorities scheme are entered on a separate tab for ease of presenting this information. As advised in my letter dated 23 September 2022, the business of Millden Agricultural LLP have declared land within this map area but have not claimed on this land or received any rural payments in the last 10 years.

Please note, as the application window for some 2022 schemes is still open, the information provided for 2022 is the position as of the date of this letter.

For the majority of scheme payments listed, it is not possible to link specific amounts paid to specific land parcels. However, for both businesses identified above, I have included the total hectares declared on the Single Application Form each year.

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.