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Scottish Budget 2018/19

(41 posts)
  • Started 6 years ago by Morningsider
  • Latest reply from sallyhinch

  1. Morningsider
    Member

    It's that time of year again and, in amongst all the arguments over tax, there is some cycling good news - or at least, there might be, possibly...

    As you might remember, the Scottish Government's Programme for Government 2018/19 included a commitment for “doubling investment in active travel from £40 million to £80 million a year from 2018-19”. However, the draft budget includes a commitment to “double investment in sustainable and active travel to £80 million”. Now, sustainable travel includes buses, electric cars and so on - not really the same thing.

    In addition, it's not clear how this money will be allocated. The ring-fenced "Walking, cycling and safer routes" budget remains unchanged at £7.4m. There is a 133% increase in the level 3 “Support for sustainable and active travel” budget line from £33.9m to £79m and an increase of 138% in the level 3 “Future Transport Fund” from £25.3m to £60.2m.

    All very dull, you may argue. However, even £80m a year can be frittered away on paint, leisure routes to nowhere and electric car charging points.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  2. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    the draft budget includes a commitment to “double investment in sustainable and active travel to £80 million”

    So is that; double investment in

    (sustainable and active travel)

    or

    (sustainable travel) and (active travel)

    to £80 million?

    Posted 6 years ago #
  3. Morningsider
    Member

    IWRATS - There will be a single £80m pot for active travel and sustainable travel. Sustainable travel excludes big ticket things such as support for ScotRail, concessionary fares and the like.

    In the context of the budget, sustainable travel really means what the Scottish Government wants it to mean. Funds allocated to sustainable travel have variously paid for the Clyde Fastlink busway in Glasgow, electric car charging points, fuel efficient driving courses and loads of other fairly random things.

    What it means though is the promised £80m will not be spent solely on walking and cycling.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  4. rider73
    Member

    doesnt matter about the amount of money, if the view is to avoid all hard decisions about getting people off the couches and out of their cars and onto "active travel"

    as stated above, a lot of this will prob. be frittered away on green painted narrow lanes, tourist routes around a coastal path, and changing pavements to shared use why cyclists have to stop at every junction that crosses it....oh and of course - "cycle safety" in schools , where kids can learn how to cycle safely in their playground and have parents pick them up in an Audi Q8 to drive 2 miles home.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  5. toomanybikes
    Member

    £60 million is ~£12 a head so just under half of Dutch cycle spend levels. If it's spent on electric busses as well as cycle paths then that's b all..

    Posted 6 years ago #
  6. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    @Morningsider

    When and how does the draft budget crystallise into funded projects? Do we know?

    Posted 6 years ago #
  7. crowriver
    Member

    If it looks like fudge, smells like fudge, tastes like fudge...

    Posted 6 years ago #
  8. crowriver
    Member

    Better news for the culture budget, it seems...

    Posted 6 years ago #
  9. Morningsider
    Member

    IWRATS - accounting for cycling investment would give a Panamanian accountant a headache. Fundamentally, the Scottish Government provides three funding streams:

    1. Walking, Cycling and Safer Routes: Ring fenced capital fund, a portion of which is allocated to each local authority. It is up to each authority what to spend this on, roughly one third gets spent on cycling projects. This will be £7.4m for the whole of Scotland next year.
    2. Sustrans: Funding is allocated to sustrans, which then runs the community links grant scheme. Local authorities must submit scheme proposals to sustrans, with awards made to those schemes which best meet the relevant criteria. Funding can be for pre-construction design, community engagement and feasibility work, construction work and post construction project enhancements. Funding is awarded on an annual basis and must be spent within the year of award. Multi-year projects must be broken up into phases that can each be delivered within a single year. Local authorities must match fund the award from sustrans,some use cycling,walking and safer routes funding for this. Roughly £18m was allocated to this in 2017/18.

    Sustrans also run Community Links +, which is for larger schemes, with funding awarded on a competitive basis - there is still a match funding requirement.

    3. Local authority block grant: Local authorities can choose to spend capital and/or revenue funding on cycling schemes, maintenance or promotion. This can be used to match fund sustrans funding or to finance other projects. There are huge competing demands for this funding, which means cycling is usually near the bottom of the list.

    There are other pots of cash for cycling, but these are the main ones. The involvement of sustrans, the requirement to apply or bid for these funds and the need for match funding make it very difficult to track funds from allocation to scheme completion. It also means most authorities have trouble developing multi-year cycle infrastructure capital investment plan - as they are never completely sure they will secure funding for a particular scheme.

    I suppose the big announcement is when sustrans announce the winning bidders for community links/community links + funding.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  10. crowriver
    Member

  11. Morningsider
    Member

    "Sustrans Scotland welcomes £80m active travel investment in Scottish Government budget as ‘bold statement of intent’"

    The headline is wrong, the £80m isn't just for active travel. I understand some of the funding will be for a low carbon vehicle procurement programme for the public sector, with other funds invested in electric vehicle charging points.

    Just let that sink in. Sustainable transport funding is being used to buy cars. Yes, I know - electric cars, but is that really the best use of these funds?

    Is it a good day for cycling? Yes.

    Will investment in cycling increase? Yes (we think).

    Has funding for active travel doubled? No.

    Is funding for active travel £80m? No.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  12. crowriver
    Member

    "Sustainable transport funding is being used to buy cars. "

    Shurely the "Future Transport Fund" should be used? Or is that all electric / "green" buses and electric car charging points?

    Posted 6 years ago #
  13. rider73
    Member

    of course sustrans is upbeat - isnt it a totally government run and funded organisation??

    does trains come under "sustainable travel" as the 80m could go towards a new publicly owned train company thats been thrown about since the last franchise owner isnt really delivering....

    Posted 6 years ago #
  14. gembo
    Member

    Sustains shake cans and ask you to pay to join so maybe not totally govt. funded?

    Local and national govt in Scotland and rest of UK keen to keep motorists happy and appease cyclists. If only the DUP were as keen on cycling and the environment as the greens

    Posted 6 years ago #
  15. rider73
    Member

    well the blurb says its a charity! so i was wrong, but for sure they get huge amounts of funding from Government all sides of the border including lottery etc. - so my mistake!

    Posted 6 years ago #
  16. crowriver
    Member

    Rail funding sees a fairly healthy increase. Small increase for buses too.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  17. Roibeard
    Member

    "Sustrans Scotland welcomes £80m active travel investment in Scottish Government budget as ‘bold statement of intent’"

    I queried this as the speech transcript does indeed say doubling of the budget for sustainable and active travel, including £20m towards electric vehicles.

    Sustrans have got back to say that Transport Scotland have confirmed to them the additional £40m for active travel, and that the electric vehicle announcement is separate.

    Time will tell...

    Robert

    Posted 6 years ago #
  18. dougal
    Member

    From the outside, that Sustrans funding setup looks like the most corrupt nonsense ever conceived.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  19. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    Last report has 7.2% of income from fundraising, the rest from central and local government.

    That's not really a charity in the normal sense of the word. Clearly it's not an organisation which can afford to rock the boat too much. Not sure modal share is going to rocket without the boat being rocked.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  20. crowriver
    Member

    Maybe not, but is that the role of Sustrans? Effectively it has become a semi-quango, much as various charities in other sectors have become. I don't think it's a problem as long as there are truly independent voices and groups stirring things up for change.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  21. Morningsider
    Member

    Roibeard - hmmm. Here's how the Scottish Government describe the capital element of the Support for Active and Sustainable Travel budget line (£65.4m):

    "Investment in the infrastructure which will allow the use of electric and low carbon vehicles across Scotland; delivers the actions in the Cycling Action Plan for Scotland and facilitates active travel choices; includes funding for next phase of the Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Scheme."

    and the revenue element (£13.6m):

    "Support for promotion of active travel and smarter measures, including travel-planning, fuel-efficient driving and car clubs, and supporting actions contained in the Cycling Action Plan."

    and the £60.25m capital Future Transport Fund:

    "Supports projects to enable us to reduce the impact of transport on our environment."

    I understand that most of the Future Transport Fund is for all things electric vehicle. As I said in an earlier post -
    the terminology used to describe the doubling of investment changed from "active travel" in the programme for government to "active and sustainable travel" in the budget. This hasn't happened by accident - the people writing the budget documents know the difference between the two.

    Details: http://www.parliament.scot/FinancialScrutiny/2018-19_budget__Level_4.xlsx

    Posted 6 years ago #
  22. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    I'd say that if a body is carrying out the functions of government then it should be an arm of government with all the consequences of that, including FoI legislation and governance.

    Sustrans runs those weird 'competitions' where viable and desirable projects are refused funding because others are more worthy. That sounds like a political decision to me that should be made through political channels.

    I'm sure they do some good things.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  23. crowriver
    Member

    I think there's a difference between organisations which really are quangos (i.e notionally arms-length from government but essentially creatures of them, such as Transport Scotland, Creative Scotland) and those which deliver government funded projects, or manage funds on behalf of government (e.g. Sustrans, Cycling Scotland (?), or an organisation like SACRO). Then there are independently funded organisations which regularly receive government grants (e.g. Cycling UK Scotland, British Cycling, National Trust for Scotland, or the Edinburgh Festival Fringe).

    So I don't really see it as hugely problematic. Public funds from our taxes will play a role in delivering infrastructure and various services for the public good. Unless we're al inhabiting some neoliberal mental universe where government should fund as little as possible and everything is left to the market to decide...

    Posted 6 years ago #
  24. ih
    Member

    If I understand @Morningsider's figures, then the much heralded £80 million for active travel, which I wholeheartedly welcomed on another thread, consists of £65.4 million capital spend and £13.6 million revenue, almost all of which will go towards electric and other 'fuel-efficient' forms of motorised transport.

    Ii think we were all blatantly lied to - there's no other word for it.

    Posted 6 years ago #
  25. HankChief
    Member

    I have asked Humza...

    Posted 6 years ago #
  26. Stickman
    Member

    Is this genuine new money or are they doing the old trick of reannouncing things?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-44030874

    Posted 5 years ago #
  27. gembo
    Member

    On QI there used to be the option - Nobody knows.

    Feels like re-circulation which is a shame if it is a genuine doubling of previous monies.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  28. Morningsider
    Member

    Stickman - the community links funds come out of the Scottish Government's active travel budget (doubled from £40m in 2017/18 to £80m in 2018/19).

    So in one sense it is "additional" and "new" money, but it isn't an increase on the £80m, which I understand may have been mentioned once or twice over the last few months.

    Posted 5 years ago #
  29. chdot
    Admin

    “which I understand may have been mentioned once or twice over the last few months”

    Is this PR incompetence, or a reliance on media/public stupidity or just that Sustrans has got round to asking for scheme submissions??

    Posted 5 years ago #
  30. Frenchy
    Member

    That's a reannouncement. Or possibly the fact that the extra money will be administered by Sustrans' Community Links programme hadn't actually been announced.

    Posted 5 years ago #

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