Transport Scotland's involvement in the tendering process of the extension of Borders Railway: EIR release

Information requested

• Was Transport Scotland involved in the tendering process to award the contract?
• If Transport Scotland was involved, can you tell me the contracted price of the award to Turner & Townsend?.
• Also, if Transport Scotland was involved in awarding the contract, is there a target date for the completion on the Study?
• And finally, if Transport Scotland was not involved in the tendering process, have you any info regarding which organisation handled the Feasibility Study tendering process and awarding of the contract?

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.

The answer to your question is:

Transport Scotland was not involved in the tendering process to award the contract to Turner & Townsend. This was fully the responsibility of Scottish Borders Council.

You may wish to contact Scottish Borders Council at CustomerAdvice@scotborders.gov.uk who may be able to help you.

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.