Pavements and crossings on the A78: EIR release

Information requested

How much money is being spent on the wasteful roadworks on A78? Pavements and crossings in the middle of nowhere seems ludicrous to me. Can I ask who made this decision? Our roads are in an atrocious state would be a much better idea to repair them.

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.

On 4 September we wrote to you asking if you could provide further information such as a location on the A78 you were interested in, date range you would like the request to cover and if the costs you were interested in were only for footway and pedestrian crossing works. As we have not received a response, we have assumed that you were asking about footway and pedestrian crossing works which were present on the A78 on the day of your request (3 September).

On the 3 September there was only one scheme present on site on the A78 and this was at Sharphill roundabout. The reasoning behind this scheme is to provide improved walking and cycling infrastructure, along with a crossing over the A78 to support Scottish Government and Transport Scotland’s commitment to active travel. The funding for this scheme is from a specific budget to improve such infrastructure, and the works tie in with the Local Authority active travel route along the B714 to Saltcoats.

The estimated costs for these works are £230,000.

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.