Publication - FOI/EIR release

A77 road closures due to incidents or maintenance over last 5 years: EIR release

Published: 19 June 2024
Topic: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: FOI/202400402711
Date received: 5 March 2024
Date responded: 15 March 2024

Information request and response under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

Information requested

How often the A77T has been closed with a diversion over the past 5 years, from where to where and broken down into for repairs to the carriageway and due to accidents?

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.

Response to your request

Please see Annex A to this response for details held of closures to the A77 trunk road as a result of works for the last 5 years. Details of diversion routes have also been included. For ‘closures’ we have interpreted this to mean full carriageway closures (full closure in one direction) and full road closures (full carriageway closures in both directions).

Please see Annex B to this response for details held of closures to the A77 trunk road as a result of road traffic accidents for the last 5 years. Details of diversion routes, where known, have also been included. Please see Annex C to this response for details of the standard diversion routes referred to in column W of Annex B.For ‘closures’ we have interpreted this to mean full carriageway closures (full closure in one direction) and full road closures (full carriageway closures in both directions).

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), Transport Scotland is not required to provide information which it does not have. We do not have some of the information requested as on occasions Police Scotland can put diversions in place following incidents they deal with themselves.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about diversion routes, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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