This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please provide copies of the following information held by Devon County Council in relation to roadworks carried out in Newton Abbot during the period January 2025 – present:
1. Street Works permits issued for works on the A381, A382, A383, East Street, Station Road, The Avenue, including permit conditions and duration.
2. Traffic management plans associated with those works.
3. Records or minutes of coordination meetings between Devon County Council and statutory undertakers or utility companies relating to those works.
4. Traffic impact assessments, modelling, or internal evaluations conducted prior to or during the works.
5. Documents explaining the reasons for any extended closures or overruns beyond the originally approved works period.
6. Any internal correspondence, reports, or decision records concerning the scheduling or coordination of these works.
In response, the A381, A382 and A383 are significant roads and in relation to the permits alone for the 16-month period requested the following numbers are identified:
• A381 – 63 permits
• A382 – (Only the limited Bovey Tracey Road section) – 167 permits.
• A383 – (Only the limited Ashburton Road section) – 246 permits
This is a total of 476 permits.
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450 or 18 hours of officer time.
We estimate that to extract the requested information from these permits would require a manual review of each one and we anticipate that to do this across 476 permits would take in excess of 18 hours. As a result, this response acts as a Refusal Notice for the whole of your request.
Under the Act, there is a duty to provide advice and assistance as to how a request can be refined to fit within the appropriate limit. Unfortunately, due to the way the data is held, this is not possible for this request.