LED street lights: EIR release

Information requested

1. I would like to know when Transport Scotland decided to install LED street lights.

2. I would like to know why Transport Scotland decided to install LED street lights.

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.

I have numbered our response for ease of reference.

1. All of the information you have requested is available from https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-19-00033/. 

2. Transport Scotland is obliged to reduce emissions from all Scottish trunk road networkoperations to align with current UK-wide Regulations as well as Scottish Government’s ambitious targets to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050.  Converting road lighting assets to new technology (i.e. LED base technology) aligns with these obligations and provides more efficient, effective and economical operation of road lighting assets on Scotland’s trunk road network.

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