A96 Active Travel project in Elgin: EIR release

Information requested

1. A breakdown of all costs associated with the A96 Active Travel project in Elgin, which commenced work in March 2023.

2. The names of all contractors who have received public contracts as part of the project, the value of the contract and the date they were assigned. If the value of the contract is commercially sensitive, please just supply the names of all firms who have received contracts and the dates.

3. Any correspondence from Transport Scotland officials about delays to the project.

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.

To aid with my response I have retained the numbering from your request.

1. To date £632,444.48 has been spent on the project. This equates to £112,264.70 of design and investigation costs and £520,179.78 of construction costs. It is estimated that a further £80,123.46 construction costs will be required to complete the scheme

2. There have been 2 contractors which received public contracts as part of this project. Their details are:

• BEAR Scotland Ltd - £94,957.74 - Instructed April 2020 but due to covid restrictions start was delayed until June 2021
• Amey OW Ltd - £537,486.74 (and £80,123.46 future costs) – Amey were instructed 7 September 2022.

3. Please see Annex A to this response for a copy of correspondence from Transport Scotland officials in relation to delays to the project. 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.

An exception under regulation 10(4)(e) of the EIRs (internal communications) also applies to some of the information you have requested because it is internal communication between officials.

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.

We recognise that there is some public interest in release as part of open, transparent and accountable government, and to inform public debate. However, there is a greater public interest in high quality policy and decision-making, and in the properly considered implementation and development of policies and decisions. This means that officials need to be able to consider all available options and to debate those rigorously, to fully understand their possible implications.

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 202400413593 - Information released - Annex A

File type

5 page PDF

File size

2.7 MB