A725 maintenance policy and road repair history: EIR release

Information requested

“I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act relating to a road your authority is responsible for maintaining. Specifically, my query relates to the A725 Heading away from East Kilbride around the Blantyre area. Please see page 2 off approximately area of the damaged road now been repaired since my compensation claim. Please can you send me:

1. A copy of your current road maintenance policy relating to that road. Please send me the full policy, but this should include details of the intended frequency of road safety inspections, how these inspections should be conducted and the maximum time between identification of a defect and repairs being carried out.
2. A copy of the road repair history for that road over the past year. Again, please send me the full road repair history, but this should include:- dates of all safety inspections between 17/03/2019 To 16/05/2019.
   - details of how safety inspections were undertaken (walked or driven, speed of inspection vehicle etc)
   - detailsof all carriageway defects identified, with description, date and time
   - details of how the authority handled these defects, what repairs were undertaken and the time between the identification of each defect and a repair being carried out.”

To which you clarified the location on 20 August as “approximatley from the Blantyre off ramp and the Blantyre on ramp”.

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. 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 which is available at the following link https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/44436/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-scottish-trunk-road-network-january-2019.pdf
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.
2. Please refer to Annex A which is the safety inspection reports covering the dates requested and Annex B is a list of roadworks for the locations requested.
Information on contractural requirements for rectifying defects is available at the following link;
https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/44436/frequently-asked-questions-about-the-scottish-trunk-road-network-january-2019.pdf
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.

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-19-01965 Annex A - Information Released - Inspection Defect Report

File type

2 page PDF

File size

20.4 kB

FOI-19-01965 Information Released - Annex B - List of Roadworks

File type

69 page PDF

File size

2.9 MB