A85 east of River Orchy bridge: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/00715
Date received: 3 March 2018
Date responded: 5 April 2018

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 A85 east of the bridge over the River Orchy/ proximate to Kilchurn Castel car park turn off.

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 7the January 2018 & 7th March 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. Transport Scotland's approach to the maintenance of the trunk road network is set out in the 4th Generation Term Contract for management and maintenance of the Scottish Trunk Road Network and our Road Asset Management Plan. Both documents are available online at the following links;

4G Contract: https://www.transport.gov.scot/media/35900/sw-combi.pdf

• Schedule 7: Part 1 of the contract provides an overview of inspections,surveys and defect defect categories and response times.

• Schedule 7: Part 2: Section 2.7 of the contract provides details of inspections and their frequency during winter.

• Schedule 7: Part 6: Section 3 of the contract details the inspections and their frequency for Structures.

Road Asset Management Plan: https://www.transport.gov.scot/publication/road-asset-management-plan-for-scottish-trunk-roads-january-2016

2. Please see attached Annex A which is the Inspection Defect Report for the A85 east of the bridge over the River Orchy between the 7 January 2018 & 7 March 2018.

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FOI-18-00715 - Annex A - Inspection Defect Report.pdf

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6 page PDF

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80.5 kB