Compensation claims incurred on A82 with Transport Scotland: EIR release

Information requested

 

1.  How many compensation claims have been lodged with Transport Scotland for vehicular damage incurred on the A82 trunk road each year for the past 5 years?

2.  How much money has been paid out in compensation for damages (incurred on the A82) each year for the past 5 years?

To which you clarified the location on 25 February as Bridge of Orchy to Inverness.

 

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.  While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we do 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 reasons why that exception applies is that we are unable to filter results for Bridge of Orchy to Inverness in our database. However we can provide data for Stoneymollen Roundabout, Balloch to Inverness. 

The number of compensation claims that have been lodged with Transport Scotland for vehicular damage incurred on the A82 trunk road each year for the past 5 years is listed in the table below.

Year	Number of compensation claims
2014	60
2015	115
2016	94
2017	62
2018	398

 

2.  In relation to question 2, we do 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 that exception applies is that our Operating Companies and DBFO Consessionaries indemnify Scottish Ministers in relation to claims, therefore we have no involvement in this process and do not hold the information requested.

 

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