Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route financial questions: EIR release

Information requested

1) Please can you confirm that fixed price contract award value was £745 million?

2) Please can you provide the current total valuation of the AWPR & A90 Dualling Balmedie to Tipperty Projects as being discussed by Transport Scotland and AWPR contractors?

3) Please can you confirm whether Transport Scotland and AWPR contractors are, or have been, engaged in negotiations regarding compensatory payments or additional remuneration?

4) Please can you confirm whether Scottish Government / Transport Scotland have agreed to compensatory payments or further remuneration (over and above the £745million) to AWPR contractors?

5) If compensatory payments or further remuneration has been agreed, please can you confirm the value?

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 can you confirm that fixed price contract award value was £745 million?

I can confirm that the figure of £745m for the Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route/Balmedie to Tipperty (AWPR/B-T) project is an estimate of the overall cost of preparation, construction and landowner compensation of the AWPR/B-T project at Q4 2012 rates, taking account of costs incurred at the date of preparation and estimates of costs to be incurred. The contract for the Design, Build, Finance and Operation of the project was valued at £530 million and relates to the cost of construction. These details can be found on the AWPR/B-T project page of the Transport Scotland website.

4) Please can you confirm whether Scottish Government / Transport Scotland have agreed to compensatory payments or further remuneration (over and above the £745million) to AWPR contractors?

Please refer to the link in the previous question.

Transport Scotland has not agreed to pay compensatory payments or additional remuneration to ARL.

5) If compensatory payments or further remuneration has been agreed, please can you confirm the value?

Please refer to the previous question. No additional payment has been agreed.

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