A96 Dualling Programme Inverness to Aberdeen report cost: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01672
Date received: 3 July 2017
Date responded: 28 July 2017

Information requested

A96 Dualling Programme, Strategic Environmental Assessment, Tier 2 Environmental Report, Non-Technical Summary, May 2015, Document TSEA96/NTS/02; please supply a hard copy of the full report and advise me how much was paid to Halcrow Group Ltd. (CH2M HILL) to conduct this assessment and prepare the report for Transport Scotland.

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.

Some of the information you have requested, namely the full A96 Dualling Programme Tier 2 Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Environmental Report., is available from our website.

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website listed, then please contact me again and I will look into getting copy of this report issued to you on CD.

I would also advise that a copy of the A96 Dualling Programme Tier 1 SEA Environmental Report along with the A96 Dualling Programme SEA Post Adoption Statement is also available from our website.

In terms of the second part of your request, I can confirm that CH2M HILL was paid £355,292.72 (excluding VAT) for all work associated with the Strategic Environmental Assessment of the A96 Dualling Programme.

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