Chamber and committees

The current financial year marks a very significant change in our delivery model for active travel behaviour change initiatives, being the first year the Scottish Government has allocated grant funding for this purpose across all seven Region Transport Partnerships (RTPs) under the umbrella of a new Active Travel People and Place programme.

The grounds for the creation of this programme are the increased scale and pace of the government’s ambition in active travel, which has already brought wholesale reform of the delivery model for active travel infrastructure through the creation of the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) working primarily with Local Authorities through a new tiered system.

Similarly, the previous active travel behaviour change delivery model whereby Transport Scotland continued to centrally grant fund several national third sector partners across 30+ projects and programmes also needed to be reformed to deliver at scale.

For 2024-25 we therefore developed a new regional approach whereby this funding has instead been invested in RTPs, who in turn have designed programmes of active travel behaviour change initiatives which are more responsive to local circumstances and suit their needs. This is a more streamlined, scalable, and strategic model, with strong alignment to wider Scottish Government priorities and ways of working. This includes delivering on STPR2 Recommendation 6 that we build on existing behavioural change initiatives, and the Verity House Agreement principle that public responsibilities should be exercised by authorities closest to the citizen, with presumptions in favour of local flexibility.

STPR2 recommends that these initiatives are likely to be most effective if they raise awareness of new infrastructure and services. In taking a behaviour change approach we want to ensure that interventions tackle the individual, social, and material (ISM) factors that influence people’s travel choices. We have therefore developed four ‘themes’ that sit across the Active Travel People and Place programme that address long-term social trends, target our largest trip generators, help secure a Just Transition, and systemically strengthen delivery, as well as providing structure for our overarching monitoring and evaluation framework. These themes are: Schools and Young People, Workplaces, Accessibility and Inclusion, and Capacity and Capability Building.

We recognise that these programmes of behaviour change initiatives, some directly linked to infrastructure development, do require an appropriate blend of capital and revenue funding. Of overall spend across our legacy behaviour change / access to bikes programmes in 2023-24, capital accounted for 82%, and revenue 18% of funding. Of spend on the RTP Active Travel People and Place programmes in 2024-25, capital accounts for 63% (£12m), and revenue 37% (£7m) of funding. This has been achieved in the context of a particularly challenging budget and resource spending review, which has required, and will continue to require, difficult decisions to be taken across government.

We do not currently record data across our behaviour change programme in a way that would allow us to establish how many different schools or what proportion of schools have participated in projects.

This is possible, however, on an individual project basis. For example, in the academic year 2022-23, Bikeability Scotland training was delivered in 66.7% of schools covering over 60,000 pupils across 30/32 local authorities. Living Streets’ Walk to School / WOW programme has run for over 25 years and was introduced in Scotland in 2014. A total of 463 primary schools, 23% of the total number of primary schools in Scotland, have had active participation in WOW at some point between 2012 and 2022. 160 schools participated in WOW in 2022-23.

A new model for delivery of active travel behaviour change interventions has been introduced for 2024-25. The People and Place programme will be delivered by Scotland’s seven Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs). To support this new model we are developing a monitoring and evaluation framework which will improve our understanding of the performance of the projects that we fund and enable us to make better informed funding decisions across the active travel behaviour change programme.

The Scottish Government and COSLA’s Planning with People guidance sets out how NHS boards, Integration Joint Boards and Local Authorities should involve people and communities throughout the development, planning and decision-making process for service change. The closure of a hospital is an example of service change which requires significant levels of engagement by NHS Boards with stakeholders including patients, the affected community and elected representatives.

In normal circumstances, a hospital would only be closed following engagement and consultation and as a result there is no formal definition for how long a hospital must be closed before being officially recognised as such.

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-27063 on 7 May 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/written-questions-and-answers .

The Scottish Government has not committed to managing aviation demand through Air Departure Tax and therefore no analysis or assessment has been undertaken.

The Scottish Government collects information on whether any member of a household making a homelessness application to a local authority slept rough:

(a) during the three months preceding and b) the night before the application.

This data is collected from all local authorities as part of the homelessness application (HL1) data collection. Annual totals of rough sleeping reported by applicant households, broken down by local authority, are published in the main tables supporting the main annual publication, available at Supporting documents - Homelessness in Scotland: 2022-23 - gov.scot (www.gov.scot) .

The data collection defines rough sleeping as any member of the applicant household who has slept outside, in the open air (such as on the streets, or in doorways, parks or bus shelters) or slept in a building or other place not designed for habitation (such as barns, sheds, car parks, cars, derelict boats, stations etc.). As households making an application for homelessness assistance are not specifically asked to define what form of rough sleeping they experienced, no specific figures relating to numbers of people rough sleeping in cars are available.

Data is not gathered for any household or individual rough sleeping who does not make a homelessness application to a local authority in Scotland and for this reason the statistics do not necessarily cover the entire homeless population. Those people who are experiencing homelessness but who do not appear in official statistics are often referred to as ‘hidden’.

It is not currently possible to estimate the scale of hidden homelessness in Scotland because of known complexities in reaching this population group. We are collaborating with the Office of National Statistics (ONS) researchers who are carrying out research which has potential to improve data collection in Scotland and across the UK on hidden homelessness, information available at "Hidden" homelessness in the UK: evidence review - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

It is extremely disappointing that the UK Government has excluded Scotland from its bill whilst extending the Bill to cover convictions in Northern Ireland.

The Scottish Government can confirm that a Bill is currently going through the usual parliamentary process and will be introduced shortly.

The increased scale and pace of Transport Scotland’s ambition in active travel is bringing wholesale reform of the delivery model for both active travel infrastructure - through the Active Travel Infrastructure Fund (ATIF) - and for behaviour change - through the creation of the Regional Transport Partnership (RTP) led Active Travel People and Place Programme (ATPP). With public funds facing unprecedented levels of pressure, it is vitally important that active travel investment is targeted where it can make most impact.

Support for grass-roots community groups and charity-led projects is also being decentralised, with acknowledgement from everyone involved in active travel that decisions about how to support grass roots behaviour change work needed to be taken closer to communities, and in a way that’s more joined up with local and regional transport strategies. As part of this process, it was decided we would not be continuing with direct support for a number of programmes, including the ebike loan fund.

This Government’s commitment to ending Scotland’s contribution to global emissions as soon as possible, and by 2045 at the latest is unwavering.

This will contribute to delivering international action on reducing emissions under the Paris Agreement and is a more ambitious target than most other countries. The Global Affairs Framework states that as an outward-looking country, we are committed to working in partnership with other governments and using our networks to raise ambition and push for greater action. We will use our position as the European co-chair of the Under 2 Coalition, the largest global network of state and regional governments committed to reducing emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, to mobilise action from states, regions and devolved governments and to advance towards a just transition to net zero. In doing so, we will continue to put the values of good global citizenship, solidarity, fairness and inclusion at the centre of our approach to the global climate crisis .

I refer the member to the answer to question S6W-26667 on 2 May 2024. All answers to written Parliamentary Questions are available on the Parliament's website, the search facility for which can be found at https://www.parliament.scot/chamber-and-committees/questions-and-answers .