Maintenance policy for A1 southbound near Bankton: EIR release
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
FOI reference: FOI/18/00507
Date received: 15 February 2018
Date responded: 14 March 2018
Information requested
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act relating to a road your authority is responsible for maintaining. Specifically, my query relates to the A1 Southbound approximately 0.5 mile from Bankton. Please can you send me:
1. A copy of your current road maintenance policy relating to that road. Please send me the full policy, but this should include details of the intended frequency of road safety inspections, how these inspections should be conducted and the maximum time between identification of a defect and repairs being carried out.
2. A copy of the road repair history for that road over the past year. Again, please send me the full road repair history, but this should include:
dates of all safety inspections between 11th November 2017 and 10th January 2018.
details of how safety inspections were undertaken (walked or driven, speed of inspection vehicle etc)
details of all carriageway defects identified, with description, date and time
details of how the authority handled these defects, what repairs were undertaken and the time between the identification of each defect and a repair being carried out.'
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. his 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. Transport Scotland's approach to the maintenance of the trunk road network is set out in the 4th Generation Term Contract for management and maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network and Road Asset Management Plan.
The 4th Generation Term Contract can be found at:
https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35897/se-combined.pdf
Schedule 7: Part 1 of the contract provides an overview of inspections and surveys.
Schedule 7: Part 1 details Safety Patrols and Safety Inspections and how they are carried out
Schedule 7: Part 2: Section 2.7 of the contract provides details of inspections and their frequency during winter.
The Road Asset Management Plan can be found at:
2. Annex A of this response contains the Inspection Defect Summary Report which provides details of inspections undertaken and shows no defects recorded at the location in the specified timeframe.
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
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Enquiry Unit
Email: ceu@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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