Publication - FOI/EIR release

M8 West Bound J2 Slip Road - maintenance and road repair history: EIR release

Published: 23 September 2019
Part of: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: FOI/19/01999
Date received: 12 August 2019
Date responded: 20 September 2019

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

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 M8 West Bound J2 Slip Road. 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 Friday 10th May 2019 and Thursday 8th August 2019.
details of how safety inspections were undertaken (walked or driven, speed of inspection vehicle etc)
details of 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.

3. Details of all complaints and/or enquiries relating to the carriageway, received between Friday 10th May 2019 and Thursday 8th August 2019.”

On 26 August you clarified the location as M8 Junction 2 westbound on slip.

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/35897/se-combined.pdf

2. Please refer to Annex A which is the defects report covering the dates requested and Annex B is the inspection defect report.

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

3. Annex C and D provide details of all complaints and/or enquiries relating to the carriageway received between 10 May and 8 August 2019.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested 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.

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