Publication - FOI/EIR release

Vehicle breakdowns on Scottish motorways and A-roads: EIR release

Published: 3 September 2024
Topic: Public sector, Transport
FOI reference: EIR/202400416743
Date received: 30 May 2024
Date responded: 17 June 2024

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

Information requested

Statistics on the number of vehicle breakdowns on Scottish motorways and A-roads.

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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. This is because there is no contractual requirement to attend or record details of breakdowns on the network for our DBFO Companies.

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.

Breakdowns per year recorded -

2021 - 9028
2022 - 10284
2023 - 11100

Please see annexes A to G to this response, details of breakdowns that we do have.

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.