Accidents caused by wildlife on the M9: EIR release

Information requested

You asked

“Please provide copies of data/information documenting the number of near misses or accidents caused by or attributed to the presence of deer or other wildlife on the M9 between the Stirling Motorway Services and its junction with the M876, providing details of the date, time and location of each reported incident. Please disclose all data/information covering the period from January 2017 to date”.

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

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does 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 accidents caused by, or attributed to deer or other wildflife on the M9 recorded between 1 January 2017 and 12 June 2019, the most recent date for which data is available. Please note that this figure does not include ‘damage only’ accidents as such accidents are not part of our data set. We do not have any records of near misses.

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.