Salt and grit stores for winter road treatment: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02370
Date received: 13 October 2017
Date responded: 10 November 2017

Information requested

I request details of any information Transport Scotland holds about salt or grit stores for road treatment over winter. If possible please detail by local authority what stores are held as well as any estimates Transport Scotland have made about how much will be needed over the winter months.

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 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.

The Scottish Salt Group was established during the severe winter conditions early in 2010. The group includes representatives of Transport Scotland, the Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS), the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE).

The Scottish Salt Group monitored the restocking process throughout the summer, including meeting with suppliers to confirm there is adequate salt production to meet the demand and that restocking targets for Scotland are being met.

Current local authority and trunk road contractor salt stock levels and salt on order are detailed in Annex A. These figures are taken from the SCOTS pre-season salt monitoring returns for the 2017/18 winter season as of 7th November 2017.

Current stock held by local authorities, trunk road operating companies and in strategic reserve is 580,245 tonnes. This compares with current stock at 8th November last year of 596,319 tonnes and represents 173% of total used in winter 2016/17.

A designated MET Office presence within the Control Room of the Traffic Scotland National Control Centre (TSNCC) commenced on 4 September for the fifth winter season in a row. Our Met Office advisor provides us with focused transport related forecasts of severe weather and winter weather to allow us to plan ahead and keep Scotland moving.

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FOI-17-02370-Annex A-Salt stock levels information.pdf

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