Road maintenance costs and improvement projects: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00645
Date received: 26 February 2018
Date responded: 27 March 2018

Information requested

Current annual level of expenditure for both roads maintenance and road improvement projects within Scotland.

Response

As you may be aware, road maintenance is undertaken by our Operating Companies under the 4th Generation Term Contract for Management and Maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network. These Operating Companies are;

Bear Scotland – maintain the NW and NE of Scotland

Scotland Transerv – maintain the SW Scotland

Amey – maintain the SE of Scotland and the FBOC.

We have three Design Build Finance and Operate (DBFO) Contracts in which the companies maintain the M80, M77 and M74.

The AWPR and the M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements projects, which are still under construction, are maintained by Aberdeenshire Roads Limited and the Scottish Roads Partnership, (SRP).

In response to your request, the current annual level of expenditure by our operating companies for road maintenance is £78,602,525. Please note that the current figures for 2017 / 2018 are from 1 April 2017 to 30 September 2017.

In relation to our DBFO contracts, An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) of the EIRs (substantial prejudice to confidentiality of commercial information) applies to all of the information you have requested. This exception applies because disclosure of this particular information would, or would be likely to, prejudice substantially the confidentiality of commercial information provided by our DBFO companies and thus cause substantial harm to their commercial interests. The Companies are stand along operators who owns the DBFO section for a set period of time, normally 30 years. These companies have their own shareholders and financial information and expenditure which is confidential.

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 a public interest in disclosing information as part of open and transparent government, and to help account for the expenditure of public money.

For the AWPR and the M8 M73 M74 Motorway Improvements projects, 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 this exception applies is due to the procurement model of both projects, the amount spent on maintenance and repairs to the project roads is not held by Transport Scotland and cannot be disaggregated any cost information held.

The current level of expenditure for road improvement projects is set out in Table 12.01 of Scotland's Plans and Draft Budget for 2016 / 2017. A link to this document is below;

http://www.gov.scot/Resource/0049/00491140.pdf

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