Oak Mill Centre and A78 Underbridge Greenock: EIR release

‘LUNAR Greenock SARL (“the Proprietor”)

Transport Scotland (“the Authority”)

Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (“FOISA”)

Subjects: Oak Mall Shopping Centre, Greenock (“the Centre”) and A78, 1 High Street, Greenock Underbridge (“the Bridge”)

We act on behalf of the Proprietor who are the owners of the Centre.

The Bridge covers the roof of part of the Centre. The Bridge has been adopted and forms part of a trunk road, the A78. The Authority are therefore responsible for the maintenance of the Bridge.’

To which you clarified your request on 15 October 2018 as; 

‘We are looking to obtain documentation and correspondence relating to the time at which the centre and the road were constructed. We already have the title deeds. Any relevant documentation would conceivably include correspondence, plans, photographs, minutes etc. I understand construction to have occurred in the early to mid 1990s and would be content to limit the scope of the request to between 1990 and 1995.’

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 response to your request, please see the enclosed which contains all historical records that we hold in relation to Oak Mall Shopping Centre, Greenock (“the Centre”) and A78, 1 High Street, Greenock Underbridge (“the Bridge”).

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