Publication - FOI/EIR release

A725 Eastbound - road surface, road maintenance policy and repair history: EIR release

Published: 25 October 2019
Topic: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: FOI/19/02313
Date received: 14 October 2019
Date responded: 25 October 2019

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

Information requested

You asked for

“1. All third party notifications, reports received via whatever medium regarding the poor state of the road surface or defects on the A725 Eastbound from the dates 27/05/2018 to the 27/05/2019.

2. 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.

3. A copy of the road repair history for that road from the 20/09/2018 to the 20/09/2019. Again, please send me the full road repair history, but this should include:

dates of all safety inspections between 27/0:3/2019 and 20/09/2019
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”.

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 kept the numbering system for ease of reference.

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.

Annex A to this letter is a record of incident reports made from 27 May 2018 – 27 May 2019 in relation to the A725 road condition.
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. All of the information you have requested is available from Schedule 7 of the Operating Company Contract which can be found at: https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35900/sw-combi.pdf
Annexes B and C are the safety inspections and road repair history respectively for the A725, for the periods requested. The way these inspections are carried out can also be found in Schedule 7 of the Operating Company contract using the link: https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35900/sw-combi.pdf.

Defects are repaired within the timescales specified within the contract.

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.