· FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Maintenance policy for M77 with inspections reports: EIR release
Information requested
'I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act relating to a road your authority is responsible for maintaining.
Specifically, my query relates to the M77 GWO DBFO Scheme as stated in your reply, specific location provided below.
Please can you send me:
1. A copy of your current road maintenance policy relating to that road. Please send me the full policy, but this should include details of the intended frequency of road safety inspections, how these inspections should be conducted and the maximum time between identification of a defect and repairs being carried out.
2. A copy of the road repair history for that road over the past year. Again, please send me the full road repair history, but this should include:
dates of all safety inspections between 15/11/2017 – 15/03/2018 details of how safety inspections were undertaken (walked or driven, speed of inspection vehicle etc) details of all carriageway defects identified, with description, date and time details of how the authority handled these defects, what repairs were undertaken and the time between the identification of each defect and a repair being carried out.'
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. In response to your first question, a copy of the contract detailing the road maintenance policy can be found at the following link;
http://www.gov.scot/Resource/Doc/81827/0054532.pdf
2. Details of safety inspections between 15/11/2017 – 15/03/2018 are contained within Annex A. How theses inspections were undertaken is detailed in section 1 of the road maintenance policy as per question 1. Annex B includes details of all defects and how they were handled.
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. How theses inspections were undertaken is detailed in section 1 of the road maintenance policy as per question 1.