Request
1. How many properties has the Crown Estate evicted tenants from over the past five calendar years up to and including the end of December 2018? Please can you provide information for 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18 and break the information down year-by-year. Please can you provide a postcode or general location foreach property where tenants have been evicted. Please can you also state what type of tenancy agreement was in place with the tenant – shorthold tenancy agreements etc.
2. How many properties has the Crown Estate sold over the past five calendar years up to and including the end of December 2018? Please can you provide information for 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18 and break the information down year-by-year. Please can you provide a postcode or general location for each property and state the sale price.
Response
In earlier correspondence it was confirmed to you that Crown Estate Scotland (Interim Management) began operation on 1 April 2017, and you were advised to contact The Crown Estate for information prior to this. Therefore, we are suppling information from 1 April 2017 onwards.
We consider that the information contained within the scope of the request is environmental information, and your request falls under EIRs alone – exemption 39(2) of FOISA applied
For clarity, I have responded to your request using the same numbering points as above.
1. We are defining eviction as “we took steps to prematurely end the lease”. Crown Estate Scotland (IM) has evicted one tenant. We cannot provide the postcode of the tenancy because it would be considered personal data and breach the first principal of the Data Protection Act; therefore exception 11(2) of Environmental Information(Scotland) Act (2004) is applied; but the general location was the Whitehill Estate. The type of tenancy agreement that was in place was a Short Assured tenancy.
2. Crown Estate Scotland (IM) has sold 29 residential properties (6 in 2017, 19 in 2018, 4in 2019. Refer to the table below for the location (refer to downloadable file). For many of these sales, the prices are already publicly available, therefore we are not disclosing it under section 6(1)(b)of EIRs. However, we still have an obligation to advise and assist, you can find out sale prices through the Registers of Scotland (their contact details are at the end of this response). Where residential properties have been sold as part of a larger unit, for example, a farm, a specific sales figure will not always have been allocated to the residential property, so this information may not be available.
