Transport Scotland - Information relating to the phased reintroduction of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) on the Forth Road Bridge: EIR release

Information requested

Information held by Transport Scotland relating to the phased reintroduction of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) on the Forth Road Bridge during the nightly trial period from 4 February 2016 to 20 February 2016 (inclusive). I am happy for this request to be processed under FOI or the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), as appropriate.

Specifically, I request electronic copies (PDF or similar) of the following:

• The traffic management plan and/or method statement(s) for the HGV nightly trial during 2016- 02-04 to 2016-02-20.
• Any documentation that describes the operating/controls for the trial, such as:
  • the release rules and control parameters (e.g., release rate such as “one vehicle every 30 seconds”),
  • the use of a dedicated HGV lane,
  • stacking/holding areas and operational arrangements,
  • directionality and permitted time windows.
• Records of actual HGV flows during the trial period, preferably as nightly totals or a daily summary, including any log of nights where operations were cancelled or adjusted due to weather or other conditions.
• A summary of the monitoring measures used to determine that the nightly trial could proceed safely, including (where possible) the monitoring indicators and any thresholds/trigger criteria used for decision-making. If parts of this item are sensitive, I would be grateful for a redacted summary version.

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.

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. Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested because we do not hold the information between 15th Feb 2016 – 20th Feb 2016.

This exception 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 relating to the phased reintroduction of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) on the Forth Road Bridge during the nightly trial period between the dates 15 Feb 2016 – 20 Feb 2016, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

I have enclosed copies of the information you requested for the remainder of the date period. Please refer to Annexes A–E. Please note that these documents were working documents in use at the time and may have been subject to change during the process.

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, therefore names have been redacted from the annexes. 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.

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.

EIR 202600502050 - Information released - Annex A - E

File type

PDF

File size

1.3 MB