M74 driving conditions on specific date: EIR release

Information requested

Please advise what the driving conditions were like on Wednesday 11 March 2020 on the M74.
1. Was there any snow or ice reported?
2. Was any gritting done?
3. Was there any accidents reported?
You clarified on 9 June the time and location of the incident related to your request as being 11.30 in the evening and it was just past Junction 12.

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 your numbering for ease of reference
1. Our Operating Company Scotland TranServ’s Gritter Patrol Driver reported light snow falling at 23:30 on 11 March in the area of Junction 12.
2. The carriageway was treated with 40 gms of pre wetted salt.
3. Please see Annex A to this response which is an incident report of the only accident reported on the M74 at junction 12 on 11 March 2020.

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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FOI-202000029327 Information released - Annex A

File type

2 page PDF

File size

698.8 kB