A830 trunk road between Kinlochiel and Glenfinnan maintenance questions: EIR release

Information requested

We are making a request under the above Act for information relating to the A830 trunk road between Kinlochiel and Glenfinnan between 1 May 2018 to 28 May 2019.

In particular, we require the following information including sight of any written or electronic communication detailing:

1. Any reports or complaints of road surface defects

2. Actions taken and remedial works ordered and carried out in relation to reported road surface defects

3. Any inspection regime applied, including frequency of inspections, and all and any inspection reports

4. Any road maintenance tasks instructed

5. Reports of accidents involving road users 

We would also request any photographs held relating to the above requested information.

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.

Response to your request

I have numbered our response for ease of reference; 

1 / 2 / 4. Please see attached Annex A which is the complaints received relating to the A830 trunk road between Kinlochiel and Glenfinnan between 1 May 2018 to 28 May 2019. Annex B is defects reported during our Operating Company inspections of the trunk road network. Contained within Annex B notes the road maintenance tasks applied to each defect. 

We have applied an exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) to Annex A and Annex B 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. 

3. The Scottish Ministers Requirements set out in the 4th Generation Term Contracts are a bespoke set of requirements specific to the management and maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network. The requirements meet or exceed the standards set out in the national codes of practice. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.  If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

The 4th Generation Term Contract for management and maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network which also contains details of the inspections and surveys that are carried out by our operating company, Scotland Transerv can be viewed with the following web link: https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35900/sw-combi.pdf 

Our 4G contract and Road Asset Management Plan sets out Transport Scotland’s approach to the maintenance of the trunk road network. The Road Asset Management Plan is available online at: https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/road-asset-management-plan-for-scottish-trunk-roads-january-2016. 

• Schedule 7: Part 1 of the contract provides an overview of inspections and surveys.
• Schedule 7: Part 2: Section 2.7 of the contract provides details of inspections and their frequency during winter.
• Schedule 7: Part 6: Section 3 of the contract details the inspections and their frequency for Structures.

Further details of the inspections and surveys can be found in the Transport Scotland Road Asset Management Plan, Section 5.2; https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/road-asset-management-plan-for-scottish-trunk-roads-january-2016/j408891-09/#para52 

5. 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 reason why that exception applies is that we have no reports of accidents involving road users on the A830 trunk road between Kinlochiel and Glenfinnan between 1 May 2018 to 28 May 2019. 

Annex C of this response contains photographs held relating to the above requested information.

About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

FOI-19-01341 - Information Released

File type

28 page PDF

File size

3.3 MB