Transport Scotland costs on mitigation nets on the A83 Rest and be Thankful: EIR release

Information requested

"The total amount that Transport Scotland has spent on mitigation nets on the A83 Rest and be Thankful, broken down into a table to reflect every financial year from 2007-8 to present."

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.

Response to your request

Please see the following table for details of the amount spent on mitigation nets on the A83 Rest and be Thankful for the period 2013/14 until 2024/25. These costs include spend on the Investigation, Design, Construction and Environmental elements during the 4G Term Maintenance Contract (between 01/04/2013 and 15 August 2022) and the Network Management Contract (which commenced on 16 August 2022 and is ongoing).

Financial Year	Total amount spent on mitigation nets
2013-14	£2,576,543.77
2014-15	£96,869.30
2015-16	£427,404.26
2016-17	£39,129.12
2017-18	£0.00
2018-19	£146,321.30
2019-20	£311,133.22
2020-21	£824,252.46
2021-22	£121,475.32
2022-23	£0.00
2023-24	£0.00
2024-25*	£80,315.14

* Up to 05/11/2024

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 details of spend on mitigation nets on the A83 Rest and be Thankful before the start of the 4G Term Maintenance Contract.

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 mitigation nets at the Rest and Be Thankful, 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 https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.