Accident on M8 in December 2017: FOI release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
FOI reference: FOI/18/00065
Date received: 10 January 2018
Date responded: 7 February 2018
Information requested
Any information you can provide regarding an accident involving an HGV on the M8 between J2 and J3 which happenned on 8th December 2017 roughly at 3.45p.m.
I would be grateful if you could kindly provide me the following information as soon as possible:
1. All reports and documents prepared by the roads maintenance team, including those held by contractors, in respect of the clean up operation following the HGV accident referred to above.
2. All road traffic accidents reported to have taken place along this stretch of road on 8th December 2017.
3. All work carried out by Transport Scotland, or their agents, along this stretch of road on 8th December 2017.
4. All complaints regarding this section of road made to Transport Scotland, or their agents, on 8th December 2017.
5. All reports and documents prepared by emergency response services, including those held by contractors, in respect of the HGV accident referred to above.
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.
I have numbered our response for ease of reference.
1. Please refer to Annex A which contains the Emergency Record Sheet and Incident Report for 8 December 2017. 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.
2. Please refer to Annex B which is the Daily Report showing M8 incidents on 8 December.
3. Please refer to Annex A.
4. I can confirm that there have been no complaints made about this section of road during the time frame requested.
5. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies is that we do not hold reports from the emergency services.
However, you may wish to contact Police Scotland at foi@scotland.pnn.police.uk who may be able to help you.
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