Removal of litter, refuse and detritus from roads: EIR release

Information requested

1. In the following calendar years, how many bags (or KGs) of litter, refuse and detritus was removed from highways for which you are responsible across Scotland.

2021

2022

2023

2. In the following calendar years, how much did you spend (inc staff costs) on litter picking along the strategic road network in Scotland

2021	2022	2023
£	£	£

3. All data held regarding litter complaints from the 1st January 2020 – 31st December 2023.

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

I have kept your numbering for ease of reference.

1. 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 you have requested because figures showing the amount of litter picked for North East are not available for 2021, as this was within the previous contract and litter picking was part of the cyclic maintenance and not recorded separately and, Transport Scotland is only responsible for litter picking on Special Roads and motorways, and there are none of these in the North West Unit.

Please see table below showing details of amount of litter removed for the Trunk Road Network.

amount of litter	2021	2022	2023
NE	No information held prior to August 2022	3200 kg (from August 2022	9600 kg
NW	No information held
SE	5068 bags	8031 bags	7603 bags
SW	2806 bags	2489 bags	5157 bags
M80	1676 bags	1417 bags	2028 bags
M8	21,190 kg	18,065 kg	32,360 kg
AWPR	1105 bags	874 bags	1115 bags
M74	3086 bags	2129 bags	2553 bags
M77	894 bags	695 bags	1027 bags

2. 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 the information you have requested because the removal of litter is not charged separately, rather the cost is included in the monthly lump sums paid by Transport Scotland to their Operating Companies for a range of services.

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 the removal of dead animals from the trunk road network, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

3. An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

Please see Annex A to this response, complaints received specifically about litter on the Trunk Road Network.

EIR 202400404682 - Information released - Annex A

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