A77 cycleway road safety audits and inspection reports: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/03015
Date received: 14 December 2017
Date responded: 18 January 2018

Information requested

Follow up to previous FOI/17/02299 available here

Point 3 – can you please provide a copy of the Stage 2 Road Safety Audit, clarify when this was undertaken, and advise what actions were taken to address any recommendations therein. Can you advise if subsequent Stage 3 and Stage 4 audits, as described in DMRB, were undertaken and if so please provide copies of these audits. If Stage 3 and 4 audits where not undertaken can you explain why. Can you also advise why the DMRB audit process was followed as opposed to the audit process described in Transport Scotland's "Cycle by Design" guidance.

Point 5 – can you please provide copies of the 4 inspection reports that you mention including details of works undertaken to rectify defects highlighted therein.

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.

We can confirm that the stage 2 audit was undertaken by Amey in 2010, under the 3G Generation Term Contract for Management and Maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network. Please see attached Annex A which contains a draft copy of the stage 2 audit report. We do not hold a 'final' version of this document. The draft stage 2 audit report has been signed by the designer, indicating acceptance of the audit recomendations made. However we have been unable to obtain / hold no further records in regard to how these receomdations were taken forward as part of the developing design and contruction, the audit process followed or the completion of stage 3 and 4 audits. As a result we will now raise this matter with Amey for further discussion / review.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. 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.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release as part of open, transparent and accountable government. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in ensuring that unfinished or incomplete information which is still in being worked on or is under active consideration is not disclosed when it might misinform the public or give a misleading impression of the Government's view or position on the matter to which the information relates

In response to the second part of your request, please see attached Annex B which is the detailed footpath inspections for the cycleway. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reason why that exception applies is our Operating Company does not hold the footpath inspection for the 3 December 2014 as this was undertaken by the OC for the 3G Term Contract, Amey, who has failed to record the information on our behalf .

In addition, we are unable to give you the completed footpath inspection for 24 November 2017 as this has only been partially completed. Our operating company, Scotland Transerv, has programmed for the footpath inspections to be completed by the end of January 2018.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. 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.

Due to the file size of Annex A and Annex B, copies can be provided on request by emailing ceu@gov.scot, quoting the FOI reference number FOI/17/03015

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