A9 Perth to Inverness repair costs: EIR release

Information requested

The total amount that Transport Scotland has spent on repairs to the A9 between Perth and Inverness, broken down into a table to reflect every financial year from 2007-08 to date.

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.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), Transport Scotland is not required to provide information which it does not have. We do not have some of the information you have requested because we do not hold figures for maintenance carried out for the Perth to Inverness section of the A9 trunk road. However, the table below provides the maintenance spend for Perth to Scrabster section of the A9 trunk road. Please note that figures provided are the most up to date held and go up to 31 March 2024.

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 spend on repairs, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

FY	Maintenance Spend
2006/07	£11,967,005
2007/08	£16,250,647
2008/09	£9,354,309
2009/10	£16,287,745
2010/11	£16,523,483
2011/12	£8,274,281
2012/13	£15,762,457
2013/14	£19,362,376
2014/15	£15,164,033
2015/16	£11,311,657
2016/17	£15,750,323
2017/18	£14,624,716
2018/19	£19,559,458
2019/20	£17,092,913
2020/21	£25,236,793
2021/22	£20,582,512
2022/23	£24,076,082
2023/24	£24,944,351
Total	£302,125,143

About FOI

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