Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Official Report 432KB pdf

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Petition

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Remote and Rural Areas Transport Provision (Access to Care) (Older People) (PE1424)

Item 4 is consideration of public petition PE1424, by Joyce Harkness, on improving transport provision for older people in remote and rural areas. Do members have any comments on the petition?

I am familiar with the petition, as I know the group of people from the Dumfries and Galloway third sector forum who undertook the survey, which is quite an interesting piece of work. They surveyed service users by sending out questionnaires to older people’s groups and leaving them in general practitioner surgeries and elsewhere so as to get a picture—indeed, it is quite a concerning picture—about access to health and wellbeing services in what is a fairly remote and rural area.

Certainly in Dumfries and Galloway, there are also examples of good practice within the community transport sector. Therefore, the idea that we should incorporate the petition into our community transport inquiry seems very sensible, as that should reveal both the bad and the good and show what could be done.

I also agree with the recommendation that we seek an update from the Scottish Government. It looks like the final report of the working group, which was established following the Audit Scotland report, should have gone to ministers by now and the applications for the pilot projects should have been sought last month or this month. It would be useful to know whether that timescale is being adhered to.

Do members agree with the recommendations in the paper?

Members indicated agreement.