Request
1. Please provide all information you hold concerning the peer review of the report by Wilding TA and Black KD. Particularly, please provide full information as to which named SARF directors raised concerns, and what the concerns raised by each named SARF director were
2. If the SARF project was funded by the Crown Estate, directly or indirectly,
a. please provide full information on the process by which the project came about,
b. how the decision was made
c. by whom
d. decision to the subject the PAMP2 report to peer review
e. decision to commission Professor Edwards to write his report.
3. Detail the degree to which you, any Scottish public authorities or any other party had any editorial control over either report
Response
Exemption 39(2) - Environmental Information - from Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 applied.
1. Includes emails between the directors; the initial call for proposals for the SARF098 study; a draft report of the study – reply to reviewer’s comments; evaluation form for most of the reviewers – we do not hold reviewer 05 in our records; and a first review draft report. Exception 11(2) in Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 is applied, where the redactions are personal data; releasing this information would contravene the first Principle of the Data Protection Act 1998.
2. The Crown Estate provided core funding to SARF as well as periodic additional funding for special projects (of which this PAMP2 study was not one) which ceased after the 2015-16 Financial Year. Alex Adrian was not appointed a director of SARF until 2015, after the PAMP2 study was commissioned and Crown Estate Scotland holds no information on its commissioning nor decisions on its peer review other than what is contained in the appended documents
3. Matters relating editorial control are contained in the information supplied, and we have no additional information or knowledge of any such exercised by any other Scottish public authority or third party
