School Buses (Safety Measures) (PE892)
Agenda item 2 is petition PE892, which was referred to the committee by the Public Petitions Committee on 3 May. The clerk's paper proposes that the committee invite the petitioner to give evidence as part of our annual scrutiny of the implementation of guidance on school transport. Are members content with that proposal?
Members indicated agreement.
It will be useful for that meeting to have a note of which issues are reserved and which are devolved, given that the petition clearly includes reserved matters, such as the regulations under the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984.
When Rhona Brankin was a committee member, before she became a minister, she was the committee's reporter on school transport and was supposed to examine the yellow bus system in Aberdeenshire. School transport includes a wide range of different aspects, so I hope that we can have a reasonable slot for our discussion. It would be helpful to have in advance some background on the committee's previous consideration of the issue, as we were keen to keep a close watching brief on the matter to check whether the guidance needs to be changed.
It might be useful to get a picture of how standards vary across the country. As we all know, each local authority has responsibility for its area and regulations are implemented in different ways. It would be helpful to have an overview of what is happening. I do not know how we could get that.
I have a vague feeling that reference was made to a Convention of Scottish Local Authorities working group on the issue when we considered the matter before.
I think that we asked whether there would be such a group.
I recall reference being made to a ministerial/COSLA group. We can check that, but it might be easier to write to COSLA to ask whether it gathers any information on the issue.
Yes, we should do as much preparation as possible in advance of our meeting. That could be done over the summer so that we hit the ground running when we consider the issue.
Okay.