Rural Payments relating to Kinrara estate: EIR release

Information requested

With regard to Kinrara Estate in west Aviemore:

1. The details of all Rural Payments made with respect to the land within the boundary map of the Kinrara Estate, which you helpfully provided in two overlapping maps (from north west to south east), with the shaded area denoting the estate land;
2. The name of the organisation or organisations receiving rural payments;
3. A complete breakdown of these payments, including individual items paid for under the Agri Environment Climate Scheme;
4. The number of hectares for which payments were made; and
5. The totals for each year, for the last eight years.

As advised in my acknowledgement to you, 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

1. I have now completed my search and can confirm that no rural payments have been made in respect of this land. One business under the name of Lost Forest Ltd do have a contract under the Forestry Grant Scheme (FGS) but as yet they have received no payments. As the FGS is administered by Scottish Forestry, if you require any information on any claims submitted by Lost Forest Ltd you will need to send a separate request for information to them. They can be contacted by email at: scottish.forestry@forestry.gov.scot.

2.-5. As a result this also means a nil return for 2 to 5 above.

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.