West Loch Lomond Cycle Path between Luss and Inverbeg maintenance: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for “We are making a request under the above Act for information relating to procedures in place for maintaining and inspecting the West Loch Lomond Cycle Path between Luss and Inverbeg.

•  Information including sight of any written or electronic communication, detailing all accidents which have been reported to have occurred on the cycle path.
•  Information including sight of any written or electronic communication, detailing the inspections undertaken, defects recorded, and repair or maintenance work undertaken by the council or anyone on their behalf relating to the West Loch Lomond Cycle Path over the period of 1 January 2018 to the present date.
•  Information including sight of any written or electronic communication, detailing all complaints made in relation to the cycle path between Luss and Inverbeg.
•  Information including sight of any written or electronic communication, detailing all policies and procedures in place relating to inspecting and maintaining roads/paths.
•  Information including sight of any written or electronic communication, detailing training provided to those responsible for inspecting and maintaining the roads/paths”.

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 your enquiries 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.  This is because there have been no recorded personal injury accidents involving pedal cycles on the section from Inverbeg to Luss from 2014 to present.

2. 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.  This is because we do not retain records relating to inspections carried out by Councils or their contractors on the West Loch Lomond cycle path.  However, you may wish to contact Argyll and Bute Council or West Dunbartonshire Council who may be able to help you. Annex A shows the area of responsibility for Scottish Ministers, West Dunbartonshire Council and Argyll and Bute Council and contact telephone numbers.

3. Annex B to this response details of all communications detailing incidents relating to A82 cycle paths. There were no reported incidents between Luss and Inverbeg.

4. The information you have requested is available from https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/foi-eir-release/2018/09/foi-18-02131/documents/foi-18-02131---annex-a---inspection-manual_part1/foi-18-02131---annex-a---inspection-manual_part1/govscot%3Adocument.

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.  No training records are held by our Operating Company.

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-19-02038 - Information Released

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3 page PDF

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1.4 MB