A90 road safety campaign finance: FOI release

FOI reference: FOI/17/02625
Date received: 2 November 2017
Date responded: 30 November 2017

Information requested

'Please tell me how much money Transport Scotland has spent on the A90 road safety campaign: http://a90road.info/

Please tell me when this campaign started, and how much has been spent in total per month.'

Response

In addition, please break down for me all the advertising methods that Transport Scotland has paid for as part of this campaign: Radio, TV, petrol pumps, bus shelters etc, and tell me how much Transport Scotland has spent on each of these advertising methods.

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 communication campaign aimed at raising awareness around the introduction of average speed cameras on the A90 and involved a combination of website development, production of publicity material and media activity. This commenced on 28 March 2017.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have the information in the format you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This is because the costs of the communication campaign are not broken down in the manner you have requested.

However, the consildated costs are outlined below:

Website Development and Maintenance	£9,276.00
Publicity Production Costs	£17,353.68
Media Costs	£17,223.88
Total	£43,853.56

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