Cost of New National Park: EIR release

Information requested

• I understand the Scottish Government is currently searching for Scotland’s next National Park.
• Five areas in running to be Scotland's next national park amid farmer concern - FarmingUK News.
• Can you tell me what the cost of this exercise has been to date. This would include all costs related to admin, staffing etc, and if these costs could be separated out as well.

Response

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 exception 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 exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception, 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.

The delivery costs of this exercise to date: £315,881.29.

In relation to your request for ‘all costs related to admin, staffing etc, and if these costs could be separated out as well’. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not hold some of the information in the format you have requested.

It may help if I explain that Civil Servants operate flexibly across a range of policies and programmes according to the specific requirements of the work at any given time. They do not, as a matter of course, record the proportion of their time spent working on particular matters. It is therefore not possible to say specifically how much time has been spent and the subsequent cost involved with work on Scotland’s next national park.

NatureScot is a Non Departmental Public Body of the Scottish Government and Scotland’s Nature Agency. In 2022 NatureScot was asked to undertake public consultation and stakeholder engagement in order to provide advice to the Scottish Government on the future of National Parks in Scotland. More information is available here: National Parks Advice to Ministers - February 2023 | NatureScot.

I have provided you with the available breakdown of costs held within our records below.

Costs to Date	Total (£)
NatureScot funding for New National Parks	100,000.00
Consultation	27,387.77
Impact assessments	48,269.22
Nominations support funding	140,224.30
Total	£315,881.29

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.