Transport Scotland was established in January 2006 as an executive agency of the Scottish Executive directly accountable to Scottish Ministers.
Transport Scotland has responsibility for the majority of rail powers in Scotland, while responsibility for safety regulation across Great Britain remains with the Office of Rail and Road.
In July 2004, the Department for Transport (DfT) published The Future of Rail White Paper. A major change introduced by this was the transfer of responsibility for rail strategy and funding in Scotland to Scottish Ministers.
This means the Secretary of State for Transport and Scottish Ministers will now provide us with separate high level output specifications (HLOSs) and a statement of the public funds available (SOFAs) for the delivery of those outputs in England and Wales and Scotland respectively. In practice, at future access charge reviews we will establish Network Rail's outputs and corresponding revenue requirement separately for Scotland and for England and Wales.
In December 2005, we published our approach to regulation in Scotland. The focus was on how we will conduct future access charges reviews, and how we will work with Scottish Ministers to secure their reasonable requirements for the railway in Scotland.