Commentary on Sections Part 1: Regional Transport Chapter 1: Regional Transport Partnerships Section 1: Establishment of regional Transport Partnerships
11.Section 1 places a duty on the Scottish Ministers to create regionally based Transport Partnerships by order.
12.Section 1(1) requires the Scottish Ministers to determine the boundaries of the Transport Partnerships so that every part of Scotland is within a Transport Partnership. It also obliges the Scottish Ministers to ensure that Transport Partnerships have a constitution to govern their activities and to provide as to their membership.
13.Section 1(2)(a) limits the total number of councillor members in any one Transport Partnership to a maximum of twenty. Section 1(2)(b) requires that the membership of each Transport Partnership includes at least one but not more than five councillors from each council whose area or any part of their area falls within the Transport Partnership’s region. It defines the terms “councillor member” and “constituent council”. A Transport Partnership’s area may comprise the area of a single council.
14.Section 1(2)(c) requires the Scottish Ministers to appoint other members to each Transport Partnership. Under section 1(3) this requirement will only continue until the council elections of May 2007. Thereafter, under the terms of section 1(2)(c), these other members will be appointed by the Transport Partnership itself, and these appointments will be subject to the consent of the Scottish Ministers.
15.Section 1(2)(e) requires the Scottish Ministers to establish the decision-making rules for a Transport Partnership. Each councillor member will have one vote but, under section 1(4), councillor members shall have their votes weighted by making them count as one, two, three or four votes. Section 1(2)(e)(i) ensures that councillor members may always vote and that other members may vote on such matters as the Transport Partnership determines are appropriate. However, other members may never vote on the amount of funding to be provided by individual councils to a Transport Partnership, as provided for by section 3(2)(a) or on the making of a request to the Scottish Ministers to confer transport functions on a Transport Partnership by an order made under the provisions of section 10(1).
16.Section 1(2)(f) gives powers to the Scottish Ministers to determine that certain offices of the partnership, for example the chairperson or deputy chairperson, can be held only by councillor members and not by other members.
17.The Scottish Ministers will carry out their duties and powers in this section by orders that will, as stated in section 52(3), be laid in draft and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.