FOI/20/00089 · FOI/EIR · clarification
A90/A96 Haudagain Improvement Scheme principal contractor: FOI release
Information requested
I would ask for your comments on their correspondence, namely:
What proof do you have that Environtec Ltd was principal contractors of the site? Why were there two principal contractors?
A request for clarification was issued on 6 February 2020 to clarify if question 1 was referring to the site of the whole A92/A96 Haudagain project or the site of the incident at 8 Logie Place.
Following receipt of your clarification received on 7 February 2020, it was confirmed that your request was for the principal contractors of the Haudagain 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.
What proof do you have that Environtec Ltd was principal contractors of the site? Please see Annex A which includes the Form F10 notification of construction project issued to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) naming Environtec Ltd as the principal contractor for the
project.
Personal information relating to individual staff members has been redacted within the Form F10 notification; the reason for this is explained in the exception below.
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. 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.
We have previously issued you with a blank copy of the A90/A96 Haudagain Improvement Demolition and Refurbishment Asbestos Surveys Contract which states that the surveyor is the Principal Contractor under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015.
Please refer to the following link to our previous letter dated 6 January 2020: https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-02619/.
Why were there two principal contractors? HSE guidance on regulation 13 of the Construction (Design Management) 2015 states that it is acceptable to have more than one principal contractor. Please refer to the following link which includes this guidance: https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/priced/l153.pdf.
About FOI The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.
Detected exemption language
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. 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.