Funding provided to support the implementation of a low emission zone : EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/18/03621
Date received: 5 December 2018
Date responded: 7 January 2019

Information requested

How much capital funding has been made available to each local authority in Scotland to support the implementation of a low emission zone alongside a breakdown of funding. 

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

In response to your request £2.2 million capital and £400,000 resource funding was made available to local authorities from the 2018/19 budget to support the introduction of low emission zones.

It should be noted that local authorities were invited to bid for both capital and resource funding.

Glasgow City Council were the only local authority to bid for capital funding at this time. The details of which were outlined in our response to your query dated 6 November 2018 (reference: FoI/18/03265).  I have provided a table with breakdown of spend as requested.

It may be helpful to note that the other bids received from local authorities focused on resource funding in this financial year. I have included these figures for your convenience.

The following tables outline the breakdown of funding allocated:

 

Glasgow City Council - Capital and Resource Funding
Item/Activity - Capital	Award (£)
Bus Priority Measures	100,000
Item/Activity - Resource
Traffic Modelling	48,000
Stakeholder Engagement Workshops	5000
Equalities Impact Assessment and Environmental Appraisal	30,000
Staffing Costs	22,000
Communications work	60,000
Evaluability Assessment	1,800
Total	266,800

 

City of Edinburgh Council -  Resource Funding Only
Item/Activity	Award (£)
Impact Assessments	50,000
Traffic modelling and technical support to inform LEZ boundary identification	10,000
Assessment of commercial vehicle fleets in Edinburgh impacted by LEZs	50,000
Further air quality data collection and monitoring	1800
Total	111,800

 

Dundee City Council - Resource Funding Only
Item/Activity	Award (£)
Consultant support to develop LEZ proposals	100,000
Upgrades to the regional traffic model to support LEZ options testing	40,000
Total	140,000

 

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