Transport Scotland costs to produce the A9 Dualling website: EIR release
- Published
- 29 January 2025
- Topic
- Public sector, Transport
- FOI reference
- EIR/202400445383
- Date received
- 17 December 2024
- Date responded
- 20 January 2025
Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.
Information requested
The total amount that Transport Scotland paid to produce the A9 Dualling website (https://www.a9dualling.scot/).
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 can advise that we only hold part of the information you have requested. From the information we hold, we can disaggregate costs to produce the A9 Dualling website, to the date of your request (17 December 2024) of £69,200.96, excluding VAT.
This figure includes the cost to design, develop, maintain and update the A9 Dualling Website. However, this does not include all of the costs to produce the website, as due to the way that some of the costs are invoiced, costs relating only to website production cannot be disaggregated within the information that we hold. Further details can be found below.
While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. We do not hold some of the cost associated with the production and maintenance of the A9 Dualling Website as it cannot be disaggregated within the information we hold. 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 A9 Dualling website spend, we cannot provide some of the information which we do not hold.
About FOI
The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Contact
Please quote the FOI reference
Central Correspondence Unit
Email: contactus@gov.scot
Phone: 0300 244 4000
The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG
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