FOI Request - Review of 101003529885 Potholes Total Spent
Request 101003556321
Review of 101003529885 Potholes Total Spent
I would like to challenge the time period for which you have provided the information. I specified I would like a total pothole spend figure for January-Dec 2023. Whilst I realise you have provided me with a total figure split for the financial year, this does not allow me to understand the total for the calendar year of 2023. Can you please provide me with a breakdown of the months so that I can have information for the time period I specified?
Response 15-05-2024
Following your request for a review (our ref: 101003556321) of your Freedom of Information (FOI) Request - Potholes Total Spent - 101003529885, a review meeting was held on 10th May 2024. In attendance were the Information Governance Manager and Data Protection Officer, Asset Co-ordinator, Solicitor, and Information Co-ordinator.
Your FOI Request from 19th March 2024 was discussed.
We reviewed our response of 11th April 2024 in which we gave figures for the total spent on Potholes split up into January to March 2023 and April 2023 to March 2024. We apologise that this was not broken down into the time periods you had requested and that we had not provided an explanation for this. The reason for the figures having been given in this way is that we do not hold the information in the format requested by you, i.e. broken down month by month. This is due to a number of reasons, specifically a change of software from April 2023, the nature of the council’s procurement of materials (that are bought in bulk and then used over varying periods of time), and the way in which the spend on carriageway defect repairs has been recorded from April 2023 onwards.
In addition to the above, finding the correct information for the workforce is equally difficult, as we would have to check timesheets for each individual case to see if it was to do with carriageway defect repairs. At over 5000 cases this would take the Council in excess of £600 of staff time. In accordance with section 12 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (excessive cost), we are therefore unable to comply with this part of the request.
The Council does not hold the total amount of money spent on road maintenance, relating directly to pothole reports and repairs across the Local Road Network, broken down on a monthly spend basis. As this information is not held, we should have applied Section 17 of the FOISA – information not held. We apologise for not making this clearer in our original response.