A9 trunk road maintenance and expansion expenditure: EIR release

Information requested

1. Total expenditure on road maintenance for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by year.

2. Total expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by year.

3. Total expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by project.

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.

1. Total expenditure on road maintenance for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by year.

Please find below table containing maintenance expenditure on the A9 trunk road between Keir Roundabout and Scrabster. We hold this information in financial years rather than calendar years (1 April 2007 to 31 March 2023) and rounded to the nearest £100,000.

To note, the maintenance figures include spend on improvement projects implemented via our term maintenance contracts, including projects to provide sections of 2+1 wide single carriageway.

Financial Year	A9 trunk road expenditure on maintenance
2007/2008	£21.8M
2008/2009	£11.4M
2009/2010	£21.8M
2010/2011	£19.8M
2011/2012	£10.9M
2012/2013	£19.4M
2013/2014	£23.5M
2014/2015	£21.4M
2015/2016	£13.8M
2016/2017	£17.7M
2017/2018	£16.6M
2018/2019	£22.7M
2019/2020	£20.1M
2020/2021	£30.8M
2021/2022	£28.2M
2022/2023	£28.1M
Total	£328M

2. Total expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by year.

Please find below tables containing the information requested which we hold in calendar years from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2023. The figures include spend for taking the project through the design, statutory process, acquiring all the land required for the scheme, demolition and preparatory works, procurement of a Contractor to construct the works, and all construction and project management costs to build the scheme. The figures provided are also inclusive of VAT where applicable.

Calendar Year	A9 road expansion expenditure
2012	£1,808,980.42
2013	£7,355,415.05
2014	£8,504,759.86
2015	£29,956,655.95
2016	£48,259,882.80
2017	£50,984,903.17
2018	£55,951,535.81
2019	£97,887,208.63
2020	£67,372,824.23
2021	£54,114,361.76
2022	£44,103,479.18
Total	£466,300,006.86

In regards to expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2011, exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held) applies.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have the information you have requested under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), Transport Scotland is not required to provide information which it does not have. 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. While we recognise there may be some public interest in expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between 1 January 2007 to 2011, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

I can confirm that Transport Scotland’s financial records for A9 expansion projects between 2007 and 2011 cannot be accurately calculated in the format requested due to a change in systems.

3. Total expenditure on road expansion projects for the A9 between Jan 1st 2007 and Jan 1st 2023, delineated by project.

Project	Total expenditure
A9 Crubenmore Extension	£520,346.08
A9 Helmsdale - Ord Of Caithness Phase 2	£191,796.17
A9 Dualling - P1- Luncarty Pass of Birnam	£98,112,070.14
A9 Dualling - P2- Pass of Birnam to Tay Crossing	£38,748,557.21
A9 Dualling - P3- Tay Crossing to Ballinluig	£22,836,897.27
A9 Dualling - P4- Pitlochry to Killiecrankie	£23,467,898.74
A9 Dualling - P5- Killiecrankie to Pitagowan*	£23,112,907.70
A9 Dualling - P6 - Pitagowan to Glen Garry*	£1,615,634.25
A9 Dualling - P7- Glen Garry to Dalwhinnie	£17,569,699.70
A9 Dualling - P8- Dalwhinnie to Crubenmore	£28,003,316.17
A9 Dualling - P9- Crubenmore to Kincraig	£31,181,929.50
A9 Dualling - P10- Kincraig to Dalraddy	£43,814,472.13
A9 Dualling - P11- Dalraddy to Slochd	£55,558,028.36
A9 Dualling - P12- Tomatin to Moy	£51,913,625.86
A9 Dualling Preliminary Engineering Support Services	£876,807.14
A9 Dualling Strategic Environmental Assessment	£3,399,917.05
A9 Dualling Programme Delivery	£7,918,534.86
A9 Ballinluig Junction Improvement	£379,982.31
A9 Berridale Braes Improvement	£9,910,176.27
A82/A9 Longman Junction	£7,167,409.96
Total	£466,300,006.86

* A9 Dualling projects P5 (Killiecrankie to Pitagowan) and P6 (Pitagowan to Glen Garry) were combined in 2016/17 and became known as P5 Killiecrankie to Glen Garry.

Please note that the A9/A96 Inshes to Smithton Link Road project has not been included in the scope of projects reported above.

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