Freedom of Information Request - Finzean Estate
Date: 07 July 2025
Our ref: SIR180527/A5237385
Information Request – Finzean Estate
Your Request
Please can you provide details of any and all meetings, advice offered and/or guidance provided by NS to any of Finzean Estate and/or Finzean Community Council and/or individuals Andrew Farquarson, and/or Guy Haslam, and/or Donald Farquarson, or any other individual acting for the above parties, in respect of Schedule 1 raptors and the monitoring thereof during 2025.
Can you provide any advice offered by NS during 2025 to any telecommunication companies in relation to a telecommunication mast at Woodend Finzean, in relation to Schedule 1 raptors.
Can you provide any and all communications involving details of breeding Schedule 1 raptors passed to Sophie Christman at her behest on 23 April 2025 by myself as a member of NESRSG, and whether those details were passed to any third party.
Our Response
We have discussed your request with our Operations and Licensing Teams and have found documents that meet the terms of your request. Copies of these documents can be found as separately to this response.
You also requested information that was passed, by you, to a member of staff on the 23 April 2025. We did search our electronic records and document management system (ERDMS) for the email that you indicated had been sent by you, but despite these searches we could not find that document or any email chains relating to that document.
However, as the member of staff had only recently left, we submitted a request to our IS team to ask if the email “box” could be retrieved before final deletion and they completed searches of the email “box” (incoming, sent, draft, folders) and we found one incomplete email in the Drafts folder, nothing else was found. This email can be found at pages 80 – 81 of the information being released to you. We cannot find anything within our searches to suggest that the information was passed to a third party.
Our Operations Team have also confirmed that a meeting took place on the 3 June with Finzean Estate, but no minutes or notes were taken at that meeting. However, we have provided an internal discussion document that was used by the Operations Team, based on the questions that had been asked in advance of the meeting, but it was not provided to the Estate, and it is not a note of the discussion.
We have redacted out some personal data from the information being released, as releasing this personal data into the public domain in response to an information request would breach the Data Protection Act 2018. We have therefore applied the following exemption under the EIRs 11(1) & 11(2) (Personal Data).
We have also redacted out a small amount of information relating to a schedule 1 raptor, as releasing this information into the public domain could lead to disturbance of these birds we have applied the EIRs exemption 10(5)(g)(Protection of the Environment)
We have also redacted a very small amount of information that is outside the scope of your request as it deals with other subjects e.g. how to add a case to a database.
How We Handled Your Request
We believe you have asked for environmental information as defined in the Environmental Information (Scotland Regulations 2004 (‘the EIRs’), so we are dealing with your request under those regulations. To be able to use the EIRs, we must apply an exemption under section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (‘FOISA’). The Scottish Information Commissioner’s guidance recommends that public authorities apply this exemption to environmental information and handle request under the EIRs.
If you would like to find out more about the access to information legislation, there is a guidance booklet available on the Scottish Information Commissioner’s website.
Review and Appeal
I hope this information meets your requirements, but if you are dissatisfied with how we have responded to your information request, please write to us within 40 working days explaining your concerns. You can contact us at Battleby, Redgorton, Perth, PH1 3EW or email us at [email protected]. We will carry out a review of our response and contact you with our findings within 20 working days.
If you are not satisfied following this, you can make an appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner within 6 months. The Scottish Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Scottish Information Commissioner
Kinburn Castle
Doubledykes Road
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9DS
Telephone: 01334 464610
Yours sincerely
FOI Officer,
NatureScot
Document downloads
Due to accessibility issues the attached information, referenced above, is available on request by contacting the FOI team at [email protected]. Please reference the case number (starting with SIR).
