Road studs - North West unit; defective, replacements and resurfaced numbers: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for: "As a regular user of the trunk roads i would like information on road studs and road stud defects on the network particularly northwest unit.

How many defective road studs are there per route? please can you provide numbers per route over the last 3 year inspection data

How many road stud schemes have been delivered per route over the last 3 years. and how many studs have been replaced in each scheme. please exclude resurfacing schemes from this.

How many studs have been replaced in resurfacing schemes over the last 3 yrs by route

What percentage of studs have been lost from stud replacement and resurfacing schemes per route over the last 3 Years."

A further clarification confirmed that you would like this information for the North West Unit only and that you would prefer it over calendar years as opposed to financial years.

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.

Q1. The number of defective road studs from the last 3 years inspection data are contained in the table below. Please note, that due to the Routine and Safety Inspection methods there maybe an element of double counting included with these figures.

Defective Road Stud numbers
Route	2017/18	2018/19	2019/20 to date
A82	38,742	15,611	16,250
A828	8,948	3,780	4,518
A83	6,299	9,298	8,815
A830	8,090	3,423	816
A835	7,234	466	67
A84	6,556	4,173	1,782
A85	14,871	10,493	6,711
A86	8,544	4	756
A87	22,488	3,691	1,566
A887	1,650	922	N/A
A889	1,744	714	N/A
A9	73,748	31,771	17,504
A99	1,932	1,329	53
NW Remote	N/A	N/A	N/A
Total	200,846	85,675	58,838

Q2. The table below provides details on the number of stud replacement schemes, excluding resurfacing schemes, over the last 3 years.

Road Stud Replacement Schemes
Route	No. Schemes	No. Studs
A82	3	4,161
A83	0	0
A84	1	172
A85	1	70
A86	1	1,847
A87	1	2,189
A828	5	616
A830	1	124
A835	0	0
A887	1	2,189
A889	0	0
A9	10	12,739
A99	0	0
TOTAL	24	24,107

Q3. The table below provides details on the number of studs replaced as part of resurfacing schemes over the last 3 years.

Resurfacinq Stud Replacement
Route	No. Schemes	No. Studs
A82	46	4,534
A83	45	3,001
A84	21	1,293
A85	30	3,221
A86	5	355
A87	33	3,785
A828	8	868
A830	8	792
A835	10	842
A887	7	1,207
A889	0	0
A9	98	9,912
A99	8	611
TOTAL	1,151	29,589

Q4. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we do not have the percentage of studs lost from stud replacement and resurfacing schemes per route over the last 3 Years. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about road studs, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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