Risks to road workers clearing litter on road network:EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/01840
Date received: 13 August 2017
Date responded: 8 September 2017

Information requested

I have observed signs on trunk roads and motorways indicating that 'Clearing litter risks the lives of road workers'. I want to know, how many lives have been lost and how many serious and notifiable injuries have occurred to road workers while litter picking over the past 5 years on the national road network managed by Transport Scotland on behalf of Scottish Ministers?

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.

I can confirm that no lives have been lost and no notifiable injuries have occurred to trunk road 'Road Workers' while litter picking on the Trunk Road Network over the past 5 years. These figures do not include statistics for Scottish local authorities, whose duty it is to remove litter on all Scottish roads that are not motorways or trunk network 'Special Roads'. This duty therefore extends to a number of A-class trunk roads. Should you require the local authority information, you may wish to contact them directly.

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