Publication - FOI/EIR release

A68 Annual Landscape Management report: EIR release

Published: 25 February 2025
Topic: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: EIR/202500451321
Date received: 4 February 2025
Date responded: 24 February 2025

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004.

Information requested

The Annual Landscape Management report for the A68 that covers the period 2010-2020.

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. I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested.

2. Your request is related specifically to the A68 Trunk Road. You should note that Transport Scotland does not require the preparation of Annual Landscape Management Reports for individual routes. The Trunk Road Network is divided into four units (SE, SW, NE, NW) which are managed on behalf of Transport Scotland by contracted Operating Companies. The Annual Landscape Management Reports prepared under the contracts are unit-wide and cover landscape activities associated with all routes within the relevant unit. Information related to the A68 is included with the reports provided.

3. While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are providing the records we hold in relation to your request, whilst applying exception under regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs in relation to the records not held. The reasons why that exception applies are explained in the annex to this response.

Annex to the Standard Response - Reasons for not providing information

Transport Scotland does not have the information

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. We do not have some of the information you have requested because some of the records requested extend back between 10 and 15 years and have not been retained by Transport Scotland or its supply chain.

The reports are prepared by Operating Companies who manage the network on behalf of Transport Scotland and Scottish Ministers. The Operating Company contracts are awarded for set periods of time, usually between 5 – 7 years. The information requested (reports from 2010 – 2020) covers two separate past contract periods and two different Operating Companies: 3G contract (31/03/07 – 15/08/14, BEAR); and 4G contract (16/08/14 – 15/08/20, Amey).

As part of the mobilisation process for each contract, the previous incumbent is required to pass on relevant information to the new Operating Company for the continued management of the Trunk Road unit. However, for the landscape-related information, this only relates to the previous year, and there is no obligation on either the new or previous Operating Company to retain these records beyond their immediate usefulness.

Transport Scotland has retained copies of the Annual Landscape Management Reports for each year since 2014/15 up to the present time. This coincides with the advent of the Scottish Government’s current global electronic recording and data management system (eRDM).

This means we are able to provide 7 no. reports for the latter part of the period requested, but we are unable to provide the 5 no. earliest reports. The annual reports run from March to the following April, hence the reason the request covers a potential 12 no. documents, rather than 10 no.

SE Unit Annual Landscape Management Reports
2010 - 2020

2009 - 2010 Information not held
2010 - 2011 Information not held
2011 - 2012 Information not held
2012 - 2013 Information not held
2013 - 2014 Information not held

2014 - 2015 Information provided
2015 - 2016 Information provided
2016 - 2017 Information provided
2017 - 2018 Information provided
2018 - 2019 Information provided
2019 - 2020 Information provided
2020 - 2021 Information provided

The exception at regulation 10(4)(a) 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 past Trunk Road Annual Landscape Management Reports, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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