Maintenance and inspection records for A86 from Roybridge to Roughburn: EIR release

We refer to the above matter and would be grateful if you could provide the following documentation in line with the Freedom of Information Act;

1. All maintenance records for the A86 relating to the section of road between Roybridge and Roughburn from 01/01/2017 to 01/01/2018.

2. All inspection records for the A86 relating to the section of road between Roybridge and Roughburn from 01/01/2017 to 01/01/2018.

3. All complaint records for the A86 from 01/01/2017 to 01/01/2018.

4. All other documentation, records, notes relating to oil spillages on the A86 between 01/01/2017 to 01/01/2018.’
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 of this request which details drainage works which were undertaken at Roybridge.

An exception under regulation 10(5)(e) of the EIRs (substantial prejudice to confidentiality of commercial information) applies to some 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 operating company, Bear Scotland and thus cause substantial harm to their commercial interests. Disclosing this information would be likely to give Bear Scotland’s competitors an advantage in future similar tendering exercises, which would substantially prejudice their ability to submit competitive tenders and so could significantly harm their commercial business.

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. However, there is a greater public interest in protecting the commercial interests of companies which tender for Transport Scotland contracts, to ensure that we are always able to obtain the best value for public money.

We have also applied 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 Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. 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. Annex B of this request is the Inspection Records for the A86 between Roybridge and Roughburn from 1 January 2017 to 1 January 2018.

3. Annex C is the complaints log for 1 January 2017 to 1 January 2018. We have also applied exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) to this part of your request.

4. Annex D is our incident response reports which relate to oil spillages on the A86. We have also applied exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) to this part of your request.