S6W-27640

Asked by: Kerr, Liam (Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party - North East Scotland)

Question

To ask the Scottish Government for what reason it discontinued the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places programme, and what its position is on what any repercussions of that decision will be.

Answered by Hyslop, Fiona - Minister for Transport

The Smarter Choices, Smarter Places (SCSP) programme was a long-established cornerstone of the way the Scottish Government approached promoting the popular shift to more active and sustainable ways of making our everyday journeys.

With its origins in the 2006 National Transport Strategy commitment to test and explore “sustainable travel demonstration towns and villages, to reduce car use and promote cycling, walking, home zones, tele-working and pedestrianisation”, the SCSP programme was announced jointly by the Scottish Government and COSLA in early 2008. The term ‘smarter choices’ was itself coined in the title of an extensive “Smarter Choices – Changing the Way We Travel” report conducted by a group of academic experts and published by the UK Department for Transport in 2004.

Seven pilot projects ran for three years from 2009 to 2012, and following their success, the programme was continued and then expanded nationally, being delivered on Transport Scotland’s behalf by ‘Scotland’s national walking charity’ Paths for All, from 2015. SCSP continued to adapt as time went on, and as of 2023, it consisted of three funding and support packages: The core 'Local Authority Fund' allocated on a per capita basis to councils, an 'Open Fund' launched in 2018 to support public and third sector community-level projects, and an 'Active Nation Fund' launched in 2023 to support larger more strategic multi-regional projects.

Paths for All managed the funding bid, allocation, and monitoring and evaluation process across the entire programme, providing a wealth of expert help and advice to the beneficiaries of all three funds, and facilitating knowledge and best practice sharing nationally through an SCSP Network. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Paths for All and all of the staff who have worked on the SCSP programme since it's inception and to this day, for their passion, dedication, and hard work in the service of a more sustainable Scotland.

Some twenty years on from the publication of the original 'Smarter Choices' report, and after nearly ten years of Path for All's stewardship of SCSP as a national programme, we continue to adapt with the times. This year marks the start of a new chapter in the way we seek to achieve these outcomes. The stark reality is that despite the stalwart efforts and proven individual successes of SCSP projects, and the many other active and sustainable travel initiatives that we have supported, the national level figures across walking, wheeling, and cycling for the last decade and beyond have remained stubbornly consistent.

Meanwhile, this government's ambition for active travel has never been greater, nor our acknowledgement of the vital role it has to play in keeping us physically fit and mentally happy, with cleaner air and safer streets for everyone. Not to mention, of course, helping tackle the climate emergency for the sake of our children. And knowing the social and economic dividends that these outcomes deliver, we have concentrated our efforts: Investment in active travel infrastructure and promotion stands at record levels, over five times the amount this year than it was in 2012.

In this context, we require a new model of programme delivery that can take this level of ambition and transform it into the change that people want and expect to see. That's why we took the decision, as difficult as it may have been for such a well-established programme, to discontinue SCSP, as part of a much larger transformation of active travel delivery across both infrastructure and behaviour change.

Our new ‘Active Travel People and Place’ programme is a fresh approach whereby budget which was previously grant funded from the centre of government directly to national third sector delivery partners, has instead been entrusted to Scotland's seven Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs). RTPs have in turn worked with their respective local authorities to design their own tailored programmes of behaviour change initiatives under a national policy framework. Coupled with our new delivery model for active travel infrastructure, our vision is for more control and autonomy at regional and local levels, with an emphasis on the important link between behaviour change and infrastructure in achieving modal shift.

In discontinuing the SCSP Local Authority Fund we have retained core funding to councils through a separate ‘Local Authority Direct Award’, which in the spirit of the Verity House Agreement, lessens administrative burdens around application and reporting. In discontinuing the SCSP Open Fund we have retained interim support for community projects through a ‘Community Projects Transition Fund’, with Paths for All working with RTPs on capacity and capability building and future delivery model design. In the creation of the Active Travel People and Place Programme overall, to a significant extent the RTPs have chosen to retain the services of our established third sector delivery partners.

Our position on the impact of these reforms is that they will help us rise to the challenge of meeting our ambitions, delivering active travel services that are better aligned with regional transport strategies and infrastructure, that better meet the needs of local communities, and that significantly increase the national-level numbers of active and sustainable everyday journeys.

Correspondence May. 29 2024

Found: NTS embeds the Sustai nable Travel Hierarchy in decision making by promoting walking, wheeling , cycling

Correspondence May. 29 2024

Found: high standard and in a planned and cohesive fashion, enabling people to make walking, wheeling and cycling