Chamber and committees

In developing the specification for the next ScotRail franchise, the Scottish Government gathered the views of disabled and other passengers through the Rail 2014 Consultation. Transport Scotland met with Mobility Access Committee Scotland (MACS) as part of the consultation, and made presentations at the Scottish Rail Accessibility Forum and to the Scottish Accessible Transport Alliance.

Bidders for the next franchise to operate ScotRail services are required as a condition of their operating licence issued by the Office of Rail Regulation to provide a range of services to assist disabled passengers, for example they must publish a disabled persons protection policy. These obligations are not affected by the franchise arrangements to ensure a consistent level of service is provided by all train operating companies.

The Scottish Government has encouraged ScotRail to lead in efforts by train companies to reduce the period of notice they ask is given by disabled passengers for booking assistance. ScotRail recently reduced the recommended notice from 24 to 4 hours, being one of the first train companies in Britain implementing this service improvement.

ScotRail staff aim to assist any passenger asking for help regardless if they have booked assistance in advance, but the reliability and quality of service they can provide is significantly enhanced if passengers pre-book the assistance they require.

The Scottish Government requires ScotRail to monitor and report on a range of service provision including in some areas that impact specifically on disabled passengers.

For example, the performance of passenger assistance is monitored and those using this service are encouraged to provide feedback on their experience. ScotRail also provides customer feedback forms tailored for disabled passengers. Extensive engagement with local access panels and disability groups also provides ScotRail with a strong understanding of disabled passengers needs and aspirations.

Transport Scotland employs a Rail Accessibility Manager who is tasked with taking a broader overview of disabled access to the rail network in Scotland. Transport Scotland has built up good relationships with the rail industry and disability organisations which ensure the range of issues that concern disabled passengers can be addressed.

The 46,000 increase per 5% fuel cost rise was calculated based on the SHCS data from 2009. It takes no account of changes to the energy efficiency of the stock or the income of householders since then.

The SHCS Key Findings 2011 report illustrated that fuel poverty was estimated at 684,000 households as at October 2011.

In June offers of grant totalling £46 million were issued for the first round of HEEPS area based schemes.

A second funding round is currently being assessed and allocations will be announced shortly.

However, delays in the publication of the ECO guidance, leading to uncertainty about how the new schemes would work, and a shift in focus under ECO away from cheaper, easier to install measures, such as loft insulation, to more technically complex insulation techniques, has meant that there have been delays in developing ECO-eligible schemes.

The SHCS shows that fuel poverty for Scotland in October 2011, following a steep fuel price increase, was nearly 29% (approximately 684,000 households).

Local authority levels of fuel poverty are published on the internet and are publicly available on the Scottish Government website under: Scottish House Condition Survey - 2009-2011 Local Authority Report: Table 8.10.

We are working closely with Ofgem to ensure the monitoring information they publish on ECO investment covers all of Scotland and provides sufficient level of detail to enable us to monitor the effectiveness of our programmes. And we will collect monitoring information from local authorities setting out how our investment has been used to deliver energy efficiency measures and help to tackle fuel poverty.

We are currently considering a number of options for assessing the effectiveness of the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland. As part of this we will closely monitor the number of households assisted and the number of measures delivered.

All of Scotland’s local authorities have been offered funding from the current budget of £55 million for this financial year for area based schemes.

It should be noted an unallocated amount of £5 million has been reallocated from the original budget of £60 million for area based schemes to mitigate the impact of the “bedroom tax”. A further £5 million from underutilised accruals (i.e. unused provision) from 2012-13 takes the total contribution to £10 million.

Details of funding requested by councils as at end June 2013 are set out in the table below. All requests have been allocated in full. Requests for further funding are currently being considered and will be announced in due course.

Summary of Local Authority Funding Requests – to end June 2013

I met with each of the major energy suppliers individually over the autumn/winter of last year to raise concerns about energy price rises and to press the individual energy suppliers to support vulnerable consumers and will be looking to arrange further meetings with the utilities in due course to keep up the dialogue on fuel poverty.