Transport Scotland and Office of Rail and Road communication: FOI release

Information requested

ORR has recently published a signalling market study. Remedy 5 on page 95 says that ORR will have dialogue with Transport Scotland about funding for signalling improvements. The study can be found here:  https://www.orr.gov.uk/media/22896

1) Please can you confirm whether ORR contacted Transport Scotland in relation to the recommendation in the study, prior to publication of the study.

2) If so, please can you provide any correspondence between Transport Scotland and ORR about the recommendation.

Response

I can confirm that the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) requested a meeting with Transport Scotland to go through recommendations in relation to their signalling market study prior to publication and all correspondence that Transport Scotland holds in relation to your request above is enclosed in Annex A.

An exemption section 33(1)(b) of FOISA (Substantial prejudice to commercial interests) applies to a small amount of the information requested. The reasons why this exemption has been applied is outlined in Annex B.

Additionally an exemption under section 38(1)(b) of FOISA (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party, i.e. names and contact details of individuals and companies, and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

This exemption is not subject to the ‘public interest test’, so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption.

Section 33(1)(b)

The remaining information that has been redacted is that which falls into the exemption of section 38 (1) (b) – third party data.

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.

FOI/202100254390 - Annex A & B

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5 page PDF

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470.7 kB