Trunk Road reports and manuals: EIR release

Information requested

"a copy of the following documents:

1. The latest version of the term contract for the Management and Maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network in the north east of Scotland.
2. A copy of the Transport Scotland Trunk Road Inspection Manual
3. A copy of the Trunk Road Condition Manual
4. I would also be pleased if you would clarify if reports received and made by the Performance Audit Group are publicly available either openly or via FOI / EIR request."

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.

To aid with out response I have retained the numbering from your request.
1. The North Easts Units version of the 4th Generation term contract for management and maintenance of the Scottish trunk road network is available from Transport Scotlands website at 
https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35896/ne-combined.pdf. 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.

2. A copy of the Transport Scotland Trunk Road Inspection Manual can be found on the publications page of the Scottish Governments webpage at
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 . 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.

3. Please see annex a to this response for a copy of the Transport Scotland Trunk Road Condition Manual. 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.

4. PAGs annual reports can be found on their website at http://www.performanceauditgroup.co.uk/publicat.htm. At the moment only the report for financial years 2017/18 is available but later versions are hoped to be released shortly. Other reports carried out by PAG can be released upon EIR request.

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-202000067095 - Information released - Annex A

File type

59 page PDF

File size

5.4 MB