Subsection (6) of section 6ZA defines an affected authority.
254.The authorities that can be affected are local authorities and regional Transport Partnerships which have functions under section 9A of the 1968 Act or section 63 of the 1985 Act(16) (see paragraphs 247 and 248 above). For these purposes, it is worth noting that section 63 is not available to a local authority whose area forms part of the Strathclyde Passenger Transport area (the area served by SPT).
255.For these authorities to be affected, they must have a bus stop in their area (or region) somewhere on the route of the service which the operator is proposing to vary or cancel.
256.It is therefore possible for more than one authority to be an affected authority and the disclosure requirements in section 6ZB reflect that by allowing for sharing of information between such authorities. It is expected that in such cases the authority which is most affected by the proposal will take the lead in requesting the information, but there is no bar on all affected authorities from doing so.
While not obvious on the face of the 1985 Act, section 10 of the Transport (Scotland) Act 2005 allowed for the transfer (by order) of certain transport functions to regional Transport Partnerships. Three such orders have been made to date. The first of these orders transferred a number of functions (including the function in section 9A of the 1968 Act) to SPT. The remaining two orders transferred a number of functions (including the function in section 63 of the 1985 Act) to SWestrans and to ZEtrans respectively.
