Contractors/companies who undertake pothole repair work: EIR release

Information requested

• The name of contractors/companies you have contracts with to undertake pothole repair work.
• The value of the contract between you and each above contractor/company over last three years for pothole repair work, broken down by year.
• The number of instances where each contractor has repaired a pothole, or had a subcontractor repair a pothole
• The number of instances when you required above referenced contractors to remediate poor pothole repair work carried out by their contractors in the past three years.
• The amount of money you has claimed back from each above contractor/company over the last three years because of pothole remediation/poor quality repair work, broken down by year.
• The number of instances where above referenced contractors/companies have had to repair their own pothole repair work (or pothole repair work undertaken by another contractor/company) within six months of the date of carrying out the original pothole repair work, for the past three years, broken down by year.

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.

Clarification was requested on 28 June to provide additional information - the timescales for this request. The first sentence of your request asks for 'As a freedom of information request please could you provide, for each financial year from 2019-20 to 2023-24', however the actual points ask for this information for the last 3 years. It would also be helpful if you could confirm if you mean calendar or financial years.

To date no reply has been received.

I am still awaiting information from some of our Operating Companies and will get this to you as soon as possible. In the meantime the information already received is as follows:

The answer to your 1st point -

Transport Scotland has 4 geographical units of the Trunk Road Network – and 5 DBFO contracts (these are stand alone operators who operate a section of the Trunk Road Network for a set period of time) -

	Company
South East unit	BEAR Scotland
South West unit	Amey
North East unit	Amey
North West unit	BEAR Scotland
M80 DBFO	HMG
M77 DBFO	Balfour Beatty
Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route	ARL
M74 south of junction 12	Autolink
M8/M73/M74 DBFO	Scottish Roads Partnership

The answer to your 2nd point –

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have 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 Transport Scotland’s Operating and DBFO Companies are paid an agreed monthly Unitary Charge to carry out a range of services, which includes financing, design, construction, operation and maintenance of the project network. Costs for pothole repairs are included in these payments, and cannot be disaggregated.

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 repair of potholes on the trunk road network, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

The answer to your 3rd point -

I am still awaiting information from some of our DBFO Operators and will get this to you as soon as possible. In the meantime the information already received is as follows:

The number of pothole repairs are:

Financial Year	Number of Potholes
2019/20	12601
2020/21	13262
2021/22	9892
2022/23	8804
2023/24	7179

The answer to your 4th, 5th and 6th points –

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance Transport Scotland does not have 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 such repairs are carried out in-house and are the liability of Transport Scotland’s Operating Companies and DBFO Operators.

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 repair of potholes on the trunk road network, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

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.