· FOI/EIR · partially withheld
Gritters deployed on the A82: EIR release
Information requested
I am officially logging a Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 on the Gritters tracking devices deployed on the A82 on Thursday night 25th January 2018 into Friday morning 26th January 2018.
I would like:
A breakdown of the exact times the vehicles were deployed? How many times the stretch or road between bellsmyre Roadabout to stoneymullan roundabout (north bound) was gritted between 12 midnight and 7am? A copy of the trackers from the units deployed to carry out the gritting?
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.
Please refer to Annex A of this request which is the breakdown of when the gritter was deployed. Please refer to section p20/8C.
Annex B is an extract from the tracked gritters route and highlights the location at various times. It also shows how long the gritter spent between Barloan (Bellsmyre) and Stoneymullen.
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.