Accidents and road closures on A9: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00099
Date received: 15 January 2018
Date responded: 13 February 2018

Information requested

Information on how many accidents / road closures there was on the A9 for December 2017?

To which you clarified the location of your request on 15 January;

From Inverness to Perth.

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.

In relation to accident data, 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 reason why that exception applies is Transport Scotland do not currently hold any information on our Accident Manager Database for December 2017 for either the Northern Legacy Police Force or Tayside Legacy Police.

However we hold more up to date information on fatal accidents and are aware that there has been one fatal accident on the A9 between Perth and Inverness in December 2017. This fatal accident occurred on Friday 1st December 2017 at Killiecrankie at layby 44.

Please note that the information provided is based on the current figures available. The following are potential reasons for an accident not appearing on our system:

• Transport Scotland only holds accident information which is provided to us by Police Scotland.
• Transport Scotland does not hold information relating to damage only accidents (i.e. not involving an injury).
• Transport Scotland only holds accident information for the trunk road network.
• The accident information Transport Scotland holds is subject to change. E.g. we receive late returns from Police Scotland, who are responsible for recording details of injury accidents.
• Annual Scottish accident figures are published by Transport Scotland on a yearly basis and can be found by entering Reported Road Casualties Scotland into your search engine.

As you may be aware Transport Scotland has Operating Companies that maintain the Trunk Road Network. As your request concerns the North East Unit and North West Unit, Bear Scotland, I have included a link the the Scottish Trunk Road Map which shows the areas of responsibility for each section.

https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/trunk-road-network-map/

Road closure figures for the A9 can be found in the table below;

Region of A9	Number of Road Closures
North West	12
North East	11

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