A9 road maintenance policy and repair history: EIR release

Information requested

Specifically, my query relates to the A9 North bound duel section at the Findhorn Bridge

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 22/01/24 to 03/03/24 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.

On 18 April we agreed that the the data range for all of the information requested would be 22/01/24 to 03/03/24.

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.

Please see Annex A to this response for a copy if our current road maintenance policy.

Please see Annex B to this response for a copy of the safety inspections carried out over the period and location you are interested in. As no defects were recorded no repairs were required. There has been no other carriageway repairs carried out on this section for the requested period.

Safety Inspections are carried out weekly. For this section of the A9 they are carried out on Tuesdays. There are carried out using vehicles driven at speeds not greater than 50mph and reduced where there are maximum speed limits less than 50mph to ensure inspectors are able to identify and record defects within the boundary of the trunk road.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.

EIR 202400409617 - Information released - Annex A

File type

162 page PDF

File size

2.5 MB

EIR 202400409617 - Information released - Annex B

File type

Excel document

File size

13.5 kB