Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route, Compulsory Purchase Orders and compensation payments: EIR release

Information requested

 

“With specific reference to whole Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route and all of the land affected by this whole project, I am aware from a previous FOI request (Your ref: - FoI/19/00275) that, to date, Transport Scotland have received 98 land owner applications to the Lands Tribunal for Scotland under the Land Compensation Act 1963 in relation to the A90 Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route.
In addition to this information, I wish to know the following for the AWPR route:-

1) How many landowners in total have been affected by the construction of AWPR i.e. how many landowners have been involved with Compulsory Purchase Orders and with Compensation payments requiring the services of a District Valuer.

2) How many of the 98 Land Tribunal cases relate directly to valuations carried out by one specific District Valuer, Mr. Scott Beveridge. ”

 

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.

 

1. Please find below a link to the Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPO) for the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route scheme which lists the relevant Landowners who were subject to a CPO and are eligible for a compensation claim which will be assessed by the District Valuer.
https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/aberdeen-western-peripheral-route-road-orders/

2. I can confirm that of the 98 Land Tribunal cases on the Aberdeen Western Peripheral route, 42 claims relate directly to the District Valuer Mr. Scott Beveridge.

 

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