Meetings and communications with Advance Construction (Scotland) Ltd and representatives: EIR release

Information requested

Letters received from, and any correspondence, meetings, communications and discussions between Advance Construction (Scotland) Ltd and it's representatives, including James Martin Shields (also known as Seamus Shields) and the Scottish Government and Scottish Ministers from 2017 to the date of this FOI request.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004(EIR), 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, 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 have enclosed copies of correspondence that fall within the remit of your request that are not currently published to the web. Where several documents relate to the same case or appeal, this has been indicated within the names of the documents. There are 58 documents in total.

Some further information is available from:
ADE-400-2002 - http://www.dpea.scotland.gov.uk/CaseDetails.aspx?id=120944 
and PPA-320-2144 - http://www.dpea.scotland.gov.uk/CaseDetails.aspx?id=121069.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the webpages listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

Please note that some of the information within the documents provided (names/addresses/signatures/email addresses/personal information) have been redacted in line with our privacy policy and in accordance with regulation 11(2) of the EIRs ( personal information), because that information is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the public interest test, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

Documents 30 and 54 refer to attachments which can only be opened using the appropriate traffic modelling software which the Scottish Government do not have. All other attachments referred to within the documents are complete and included.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.
If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide. 

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.