Pre-Budget Fiscal Statement: Equality and Fairer Scotland Impact Assessment

Transport

Agreed saving: Active and Sustainable Travel Budgets – release of last resort savings

Description: The Scottish Government is having to make very difficult decisions to deliver balanced and sustainable spending plans for the 2024-25 financial year.

This has impacted the active and sustainable travel budgets, which will not see the increased investment intended in 2024-25. This decision has in part been taken in order to fund the extension to the peak fares removal pilot to September 24. We have continued to invest in interventions to support more people to walk, wheel or cycle for everyday journeys through our new infrastructure and behaviour change delivery models. We have already distributed over £145 million of our 2024-25 budget to delivery partners for activity across both Active Travel infrastructure and behaviour change.

£million (reduction): £23.7 million (Support for Sustainable Travel: £4m, Support for Active Travel £19.7m)

Equality and fairness – evidence and impact analysis:

The removal of £19.7m of the active travel budget limits the scope of active travel behaviour change interventions in schools and communities that help people make active travel choices e.g. adult and child cycle training; access to bikes, including adapted bikes; promotion of walking routes for particular groups e.g. women, refugees etc. In Glasgow, the reduced RDEL budget has resulted in no support for the Glasgow Eco Trust, who operate in seven communities across the city, working with low income households, ethnic minorities and disabled people in schools, housing associations and other community groups to deliver health walks, led rides and access to bikes amongst other activities to support active and sustainable travel choices,

There is no funding available for sustainable travel this financial year. The £4 million RDEL funding originally allocated would have helped address inequalities in our transport network by providing options for those without access to a car e.g. Demand Responsive bus services in Perth and Kinross. It would also have supported sustainable travel to other forms of public transport eg travel to train station or bus stops. These links would have supported low-income households accessing employment opportunities and would also have improved access to public services e.g healthcare.

Agreed saving: Visit Scotland – Branding and Campaign Spend

Description: Saving achieved through reducing Visit Scotland’s marketing activity during 2024-25

£million (reduction): 0.83

Equality and fairness – evidence and impact analysis:

The saving identified will impact VisitScotland’s activity to promote direct transport routes to Scotland and drive bookings from key markets, including UK, France, Germany and the US. It is looking across its activity to ensure that it maximises the impact of its remaining budget.

Visitor numbers depend on a number of variables, such as the global economic climate and the weather, and are therefore difficult to predict. In any given year, an increase or reduction in forward bookings will impact tourism and events businesses across Scotland. The reduction in funding will reduce VisitScotland’s ability to work with partners to extend the reach and impact of their market development activity designed to drive regional and seasonal spread and spend of visitors.

Whilst VisitScotland’s market development activities will be scaled back from those planned, VisitScotland will continue to use its expertise to maximise the impact of its own and partner channels, including relationships with travel intermediaries, to attract domestic and international visitors to Scotland.

The tourism sector supports 229,000 jobs which are inclusive in nature: they are readily available throughout Scotland and can be accessed by people from a range of socio-economic backgrounds and age groups and those with a wide range of abilities. Often, jobs in tourism and the related field of hospitality provide an opportunity to enter work for the first time and can offer flexibility in terms of shift patterns etc.

The impact on employment due to the suspension of this core Visit Scotland activity is difficult to isolate and quantify in the short term because of the variables impacting on visitor numbers (see above) but visitor numbers do provide an immediate stimulus to the Scottish economy and any reduction (or slowing of growth) will have a potential impact on employment in the sector.

Agreed saving: European Structural Funds Disallowance

Description: This relates to a provision made to manage anticipated losses in the European Social Fund, which emerged after the programme was placed into suspension by the EC. The saving reflects a revised forecast on the scale of these losses.

£million (reduction): 0.8

Equality and fairness – evidence and impact analysis:

None