Pot hole damage claims on A75 and A77: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00346
Date received: 6 February 2018
Date responded: 6 March 2018

Information requested

The following information is requested:

• The total number and total value of pot-hole damage claims on the A75 and A77
• The total number of rejected pot-hole damage claims for the A75 and A77 (for the years 2010-2017)

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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested, in particular information from 2010 to 2012. Therefore we are refusing part of your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reason why that exception applies is we do not hold this information prior to the 4th Generation Term Contract for Management and Maintenance of the Scottish Road Network. The 4th Generation contract commenced in April 2013 for the North West and South West regions and August 2014 for North East and South East regions.

From 2013 - 2017 103 claims were received by the Operating Company in respect of the A75. 22 claims were successful. From 2013 - 2017 155 claims were received by the Operating Company in respect of the A77 with 17 of these being successful.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have the information you have requested in relation to the value of each claim. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. As you may be aware, under the terms of the contract between Transport Scotland and the operating company, the Scottish Ministers are indemnified in relation to third part claims.

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