List of Screening Directions issued related to extractive industry:FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/18/02348 
Date received: 20 August 2018  
Date responded: 18 September 2018

 

Information requested

 

A list of the Screening Directions issued by Scottish Ministers in the last 5 years; and a copy of each Screening Direction where that Direction relates to development that can be described as "extractive industry”

 

 

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.

I enclose all of the information you requested.  The documents below list the  Screening Directions issued by Scottish Ministers between 20 August 2013 and 20 August 2018.  Also attached are details of a Screening Direction which can be described as "extractive industry”.  We could only trace one which falls within the following category. 

Extractive Industry

(a) Quarries, open-cast mining and peat extraction (unless included in Schedule 1);

(b) Underground mining;

(c) Extraction of minerals by marine or fluvial dredging;

(d) Deep drillings, in particular - 

(i) Geothermal drilling;

(ii)Drilling for the storage of nuclear waste material;

(iii) Drilling for water supplies;

with the exception of drillings for investigating the suitability of the soil.

 

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