Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Official Report 435KB pdf

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Community Transport Inquiry

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 13th meeting in 2013 of the Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee. I remind everyone to switch off any mobile devices as they affect the broadcasting system, although some committee members will consult tablets during the meeting as we provide the agenda in a digital format and members will also access briefing papers for the meeting.

We have received apologies from Adam Ingram, and Gil Paterson is attending as his substitute.

Agenda item 1 is evidence from the Minister for Transport and Veterans as part of our inquiry into community transport. This is the fifth and final oral evidence session in our inquiry. I welcome Keith Brown, the Minister for Transport and Veterans, and Tom Davy, team leader for bus and local transport policy at the Scottish Government.

Minister, I invite you to make a brief opening statement.

Thank you, convener, for the chance to come along and speak to the committee as part of its inquiry into community transport. As I have already said, I look forward to seeing and considering the conclusions of the inquiry, not least given the contributions that have been made by the organisations that have spoken to you.

I welcome the insight that the inquiry affords into the opportunities that community organisations have identified and the concerns that they have expressed about the provision of transport to communities throughout Scotland. People in Scotland have a remarkable awareness of what will help others in their communities—an awareness that can help to ensure that communities thrive. We heard about that in our debate in the chamber last week. I am grateful for the time that everyone has taken to share their understanding and their concerns.

I know that you will hear from the Health and Sport Committee with additional evidence on transport to healthcare. Healthcare colleagues are working with some of the regional transport partnerships and others to tackle some of the challenges that we face in that area. I have had a number of discussions on the issue with the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing—in fact, our discussions date back to the time when he was the Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment—and work in the area is continuing.

As you will be aware, commercial operators provide public transport in many rural areas. By reforming the bus service operators grant in 2012, I have tried to ensure that rural services benefit from mileage-related payments, which favour longer routes and are more environmentally sustainable. Smaller operators have told me that they appreciate the difference that the payments have made. However, some routes may still not be sustainable on a purely commercial basis. That is where local authorities can step in, as they can commission and fund bus services to meet people’s needs where the market cannot provide them. Importantly in the context of today’s discussion, other local solutions, often run by communities themselves, can make an important contribution too, especially in more isolated rural areas.

Age Scotland stresses in its research on the subject that transport services are crucial and are appreciated by older people. It has presented for consideration some useful information from the Community Transport Association about the scope of the sector. Age Scotland’s research shows that about 100,000 people benefit from community transport in Scotland each year; about 70,000 older people use community transport; there are 3.5 million community transport trips per year; 62 per cent of community transport users are aged 60 or over and 16 per cent are disabled; and overall demand might rise to about 83,500 older users by 2022.

Age Scotland calls for the concessionary travel arrangements to be extended to community transport. There are some practical issues with that, which I mentioned in the chamber debate last week, over and above the issues of affordability and sustainability, but I will listen to the points that are made as the campaign progresses.

The committee has heard from many organisations that provide transport to their members and users, and many examples have been given of dedicated volunteers enabling services to be provided to their local communities, in some cases over many years.

I am not surprised to hear that volunteers are not easy to come by. I admire the commitment that is made by each and every person who becomes a driver or an escort for passengers. We all know people in our areas who do such work. Training and qualifications for volunteers seem to be essential to support quality services. The concerns about training that were raised in the evidence leave some questions about how best the sector might develop and how much the organisations themselves are able to supply the training that is required. Nevertheless, the examples that have been given show that the flexible and responsive nature of community transport projects serve communities very well and that there is enthusiasm for such developments.

The national concessionary travel scheme for older and disabled people is a very successful scheme, which provides free local and long-distance bus travel throughout Scotland for older and disabled people, at any time of day and for any number of journeys. About 1.25 million people currently hold concessionary travel cards and have access to the benefits. As members know, in January we reached an agreement with the bus industry that safeguarded the scheme for the next two years. That two-year agreement provides fair reimbursement for operators and secures the scheme’s financial sustainability.

The scheme is for registered bus services. We have no current plans to extend the scheme to include community transport services, other than those that are registered bus services, whether they are conventional or demand responsive. Last year, I enabled community transport organisations that run, under section 22 registrations, flexible services that are open to the public to be part of the concessionary travel scheme. I am aware that that is an option for some providers but not for others.

Over and above the national free bus travel scheme, local authorities have powers that allow them to support travel concessions and some local authorities do that for trains, ferries and taxis. As you have heard, community transport providers may provide some local authority-contracted services. For example, we welcome the fact that Strathclyde partnership for transport is co-ordinating a forum for community transport operators, which we hope will help to develop the sector.

With quality in mind, the concerns of the community transport providers are concerns for us all. I look forward to the conclusions and recommendations of the committee’s inquiry. There is no doubt in my mind that community transport has a place in Scotland as we build a transport system that is fit for the 21st century. I am open to practical suggestions on how best we can achieve that.

Thank you. Margaret McCulloch will begin the questioning.

Good morning, minister. The committee has heard evidence that there is a lack of basic information on community transport provision, funding and unmet need across Scotland. Do you envisage a role for Transport Scotland and/or the Community Transport Association in leading or co-ordinating research to establish such baseline information?

That is one of the outcomes of the inquiry that we will look at closely. Obviously, the CTA currently fulfils a co-ordinating role and provides representation. I understand that the CTA undertakes research both in Scotland and across the UK; it also has the benefit of getting feedback from its members.

Perhaps the suggestion ties in with the proposal that there should be a national community transport strategy, which would have to be based on such research. I am willing to wait and see the committee’s conclusions on the issue before I come to a conclusion.

As you say, there have been calls for the Scottish Government to develop a national community transport strategy. How long will it take for that to be done and for us to hear about the results?

This is the first inquiry into community transport during my time in the job, so a national community transport strategy has not been called for repeatedly, although it has certainly been suggested. The time that it would take to produce a strategy would follow on from a decision that we should do so. We are not ready to make that decision now. We will wait and see what the committee’s inquiry comes up with.

I see the merits of having a national strategy, but it is a question of how it should be pulled together. A range of diverse groups provide community transport throughout the country and such groups often play a local role that is born from a charitable or a third sector source. There is a danger in a national strategy that takes a top-down approach, because we do not want to frustrate or inhibit the development of local provision. I can see that the idea of having a national strategy has its merits, because it would let everyone know what the framework is, but I would rather wait and see what the committee’s conclusions are before I come to a conclusion.

Of the many other funding pressures that we have discussed with witnesses, one issue that arose was the difficulty of replacing vehicles. One organisation told us that

“New vehicles are urgently needed, but funding for them is very hard to come by”,

while another said that

“The lack of capital funding for vehicle replacement is threatening the continued existence of some”

community transport groups. Could the Scottish Government do anything to support community transport groups in purchasing new vehicles?

That is a possibility but, as you have rightly mentioned, the difficulty is in finding the funding. Having looked at the work that the committee has done and listened to what community providers and individual committee members have said about such pressures, I think that to some extent any charge for the service—if indeed a charge is made—should take into account the capital cost of replacing vehicles and providing training. I realise that that will not always be possible and that across the piece the collective fleet—if you can call it that—is becoming more dated not least because of funding pressures in local authorities or other charities, the move to single-year funding, which makes it hard to plan, or whatever.

I realise that there are issues to address. As I said, it would be possible to support the purchase of new vehicles and we will look at what we can do in that respect through either the transport brief or the third sector brief to support third sector organisations. However, if we were to do so, we would need to look closely at whether we could encourage the use of more environmentally friendly vehicles as we have done through, for example, the green bus fund. The difficulty is that there is not much of a market to supply such vehicles, but the issue is worth looking at.

Once again, our starting point will be the recommendations that the committee comes up with. However, I can say that we have had representations about those pressures; we are aware of them; and we are looking at the matter.

The committee has had a number of discussions with witnesses about the option of leasing vehicles. However, a number of factors, including the move to single-year funding that you mentioned, make leasing difficult for many of the organisations. Might Transport Scotland, regional transport partnerships or local authorities have a role in supporting transport operators to lease vehicles?

That would be an issue for RTPs and councils. With any investment from the public purse, everyone involved, whether it be the council, the RTP or the Government, will want to ensure that whatever is done is done on the most sustainable and efficient basis. Going back to a previous question, I think that that might be an argument for having a national strategy. Instead of putting in place a leasing agreement for a particular and perhaps very small provider, we could do that on a bigger scale to get more efficiencies.

As I said, individual councils and RTPs could do what you have suggested, but that would be their decision. In fact, because RTPs often—but not always—cover a broader area than one authority, they might be interested in looking at the matter.

In your introduction, you said that the shift in the bus service operators grant from total fuel consumed to total distance travelled had delivered significant benefits in rural areas. That very point was reflected in the evidence that the committee heard. For example, Wayne Pearson of HcL told the committee that his organisation had received a “windfall” and that

“the changes have helped us substantially.”—[Official Report, Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, 1 May 2013; c 1666.]

That is the good news, but you also said in your introduction that some routes are not commercially sustainable. Could BSOG be used to address that example of market failure and provide the certainty that community transport providers are looking for?

No. I do not think that that is BSOG’s primary role. The changes that you mentioned at the beginning of your question seem self-evidently sensible; instead of rewarding fuel consumption—and indeed dead mileage, when there is no one on the bus at all—the grant now rewards the distance that has been travelled.

BSOG benefits existing operators; if you like, it helps their bottom line, makes their services more sustainable and—I presume—enables them to take on additional routes from which they might not have made a commercial return. In theory, the grant might work in the way that you have suggested but it is really meant to safeguard the routes that operators provide and make them more sustainable. As you said, it has provided a windfall to a number of smaller operators and community transport providers, which I think is a good thing.

10:15

Do you or your officials have any sense of whether the changes have reduced or increased the level of BSOG?

What do you mean by “the level of BSOG”?

I mean the amount of public spending that the grant consumes.

The budget is fixed; it was £50 million last year, but we provided an additional £10 million towards the end of the year. However, whatever the demands might be, the budget will not be exceeded.

Tom Davy might be able to say a bit more about this.

I am trying to get a sense of the impact of the change.

The budget for the last year—and indeed this year—has been capped at £50 million. Last year’s budget was a reduction on the previous year’s but, as the minister has pointed out, it coincided with a change in the distribution formula. As a result, some of the larger, mainly urban operators experienced a significant reduction in payments but we think that about 75 or so per cent of operators got higher payments than they would have received before the change. The change tended to benefit operators who ran the longer routes, which tend to be in more rural areas, so that might explain some of the positive stories that the committee has heard.

I do not have the details to hand, but I think that the scope was also extended with regard to section 22 operators and demand-responsive services. Overall, we think that last year more than £1.5 million of BSOG’s £50 million went to community transport organisations; the figure in the CTA report, which must have looked at the previous year, was about two thirds of a million pounds. In short, if you look at the total amount of BSOG going into the sector, you will find that funding went up substantially last year.

That was very helpful.

Finally, is there any scope to extend BSOG to cover community transport services that are not currently eligible? What would have to happen in that respect?

As the budget has been agreed and is fixed, any extension would require funding to be taken from other services, which could have a detrimental impact on their viability. Moreover, in seeking to make BSOG more widely available to community transport, you have to remember that taxis and other things also provide these services and it would be very hard to extend the grant to cover those aspects. Any such extension brings us back to the question of who wins and who loses and, indeed, the £1.5 million that Tom Davy referred to came out of the budget that would otherwise have gone to existing operators. Once again, it would be worth seeing the committee’s conclusions on the matter but I do not want to minimise the difficulties of extending BSOG to the full range of services that is provided by community transport providers.

Have you had any conversations or other communication with the national health service about community transport? Much of the evidence that we received suggested that community transport is used to take patients to hospital appointments and so on. That costs a lot of money, and the NHS does not seem to be making any payments to community transport providers to allow them to recover those costs.

The NHS is making payments to cover such costs—for example, I know that in my area it funds a number of services to the new Larbert hospital—but those budgets, too, are under pressure.

As I said in my introduction, I have had a number of discussions with Alex Neil on this matter. You quite rightly mentioned patient transport, but a number of other organisations that deliver public or volunteer services use minibuses, which also need drivers. I think that the basis of your question is whether we can work together with health and other partners to maximise these things. The fact is that some vehicles are not being used as much as they could be, some organisations might be better off for drivers and some services might run to and from the same place; the purpose of the work that the health service is doing and the discussions that Alex Neil and I are having is to see how we can draw those things together. It is to nobody’s benefit if the public purse is paying for a minibus that is sitting in a garage and not being used, or not being used as much as it could be.

I mentioned one example in which the health service is currently paying for services. There was something in the newspapers recently—I think that it was in the Evening Times—about services in Glasgow having an extremely low take-up or, for some services, no take-up at all. I think that those services were run by the Strathclyde partnership for transport. That is not in anybody’s interest, and work is being done to increase awareness. Part of the problem was that people did not understand that the service was free, so they did not get on the bus as they might have done. There is an issue around ensuring that people are aware of the services, in addition to the overriding issue of the extent to which—especially in rural areas—one bus can cover more than one purpose and more than one group of users. We are looking into that.

The previous Administration ran the rural community transport initiative. In 2008, the present Government rolled that funding into local authority funding and expected local authorities to honour the Scottish Government’s on-going commitment to fund the rural community transport initiative. Are you confident that local authorities have done that? We heard in evidence that there is a desire among some people to see that funding centralised again rather than devolved to local authorities. Have you considered that?

The Government is sometimes accused of centralising, and I am not sure that we would want to do that again. I am confident that the decision not to ring fence the funding was the right one. I came to the Parliament from a local authority background, and I was pretty fed up with all the different ring fencing and hypothecated grants that were awarded. That was the right decision. The underlying principle was that local authorities had the discretion to use their resources. If they did not do what was expected of them or what their local communities expected, the remedy would be a democratic one.

Having had some education roles in the past, I am aware that there are pockets of interest that would like hypothecation in their area. However, each of those demands would eat away at the principle of democratic accountability whereby we make the awards to the councils. Councils are not like health boards and other organisations; they have a democratic mandate and must have some discretion.

It might be that less funding is going into community transport in a local area, but it is up to stakeholders to challenge that. I do not think that the remedy is for the Government to go to the council and say, “You must spend this much on this function.”

Good morning, minister. You mentioned the need for training. The committee has taken evidence from different parties on the D1 licence. It costs around £1,000 to go through that element of the training. Would the local or national authorities consider assisting volunteers through that training? Maybe there are some programmes that the local and national authorities engage in that the voluntary sector can clip into, thereby reducing the costs.

There is no question but that it would be possible to do that, but it would come down to funding. As you mention, I have received representations on the issue from those in the sector. Taking on the provision of training can be a challenge, especially for small organisations. For that reason, there must—at the very least—be scope for more collaboration between different community transport providers to provide that training.

It would be possible for the Government to provide support to reduce the cost to organisations. However, it would be useful to see the committee’s conclusions before making a decision on that in order to get a sense of priorities and what support the sector wants. It will not be possible to provide the finance for all the things that the sector wants—additional money for the concessionary travel scheme, BSOG, vehicles and training—so it would be useful to get a sense of the sector’s priorities through the work of the committee before we make any decisions.

I was not thinking so much about additional money, although I am sure that the committee and the people in the sector would welcome that; I was thinking more about the resources that are available. Perhaps we can work collectively with training providers to ensure that there are sufficient numbers at any given time to reduce the costs. All the training schemes are run by private providers—I do not know of any public sector training provision—and they might take a more sanguine view if the demand was coming from the voluntary sector. They may look at it in a different light and clip it into a local authority’s training scheme at a reduced price. I am looking for the Government or local authorities to facilitate training mechanisms on a benefit basis.

If that is the committee’s suggestion, we would want to consider that. If the training is provided on a larger scale, with more people tapping into it, that can help to drive down the cost. However, the constraints would be the local nature of the services that are provided, the volunteer basis of the drivers and so on. Nevertheless, if that is the committee’s suggestion, it would be useful for us to look at that.

The D1 licence is a United Kingdom requirement. Is there any dialogue between the Scottish Government and the UK Government specifically on the problem? Can anything be done with the Department for Transport to find mechanisms to assist those in the voluntary sector who are in it not for the money, but for the good of the community?

I think that it would be difficult to convince the DFT to do that, but that does not mean that we should not try. I am trying to think whether we have made specific representations on that in the past—I cannot bring to mind whether we have. However, if that is a recommendation of the committee, and perhaps even in advance of that, there is no reason why the Scottish Government cannot make representations to the DFT along those lines.

Let us move on to the national concessionary scheme. Age Scotland, in collaboration with the Community Transport Association and others, has recently launched its still waiting campaign. In evidence to the committee, John Berry of the Association of Transport Co-ordinating Officers said:

“I do not think that the concessionary reimbursement scheme is the right fit for community transport”.—[Official Report, Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, 15 May 2013; c 1716.]

We also heard from John Moore of Lothian Community Transport Services, who stated:

“It would not be practical for group travel under section 19 to be part of the national concessionary fare scheme”.—[Official Report, Infrastructure and Capital Investment Committee, 1 May 2013; c 1662.]

What is your view on the still waiting campaign and its request for community transport to be included in the national concessionary scheme?

As I have said, I have tried to approach the matter with an open mind, but some of the practical difficulties—a number of which were set out by Jim Eadie in the debate last week—are real problems. I am thinking of things such as the investment in the infrastructure that would be required if community transport were to be included in the national scheme. Is that infrastructure the right priority on which to spend thousands of pounds? Also, it would be very difficult to extend the scheme to the whole of the community transport sector, given that it involves taxis and other vehicles.

We should try to keep an open mind about what Age Scotland has said. It recognises the budget pressures that the proposal would give rise to and has suggested that the age of eligibility could be increased from 60 to the current pension age. However, the Government does not intend to do that. We are sticking with the current eligibility rules because we think that these are pretty tough times, especially for those who are on fixed incomes, and we do not want to withdraw that entitlement. We have a pretty fixed view on that. We do not want to change the eligibility criteria.

10:30

Additional calls on the concessionary travel scheme would constitute a straightforward addition to the budget in very constrained times. There is perhaps more work to be done on what the approach would cost—I have seen a figure of £11 million or so. My view, which I expressed in the debate last week, is that as soon as we included community transport providers in the scheme demand would start to increase, so the £11 million figure would be likely to increase.

On the still waiting campaign’s general approach of trying to see what further assistance can be provided, we want to have an open mind. That is particularly the case in relation to people who are entitled to a concessionary fare but who cannot access the bus because the service cannot accommodate their accessibility requirements. We have tried to look at the issue in the context of some of the changes that we have made, but the issue would bear further examination. We are keen to look further at that part of the campaign.

However, the extension of the scheme would cost money and we are not willing to cut back entitlement as it stands.

In evidence, we heard about the high cost of ticket machines and problems to do with their reliability and with attracting volunteers who are prepared to be trained to use them. Given that two thirds of the vehicles that are used in community transport are private cars and that local authorities operate a range of local concession schemes—Aberdeenshire Council supports community transport; Scottish Borders Council has a taxi system; and City of Edinburgh Council recently talked about having a tram scheme—is there scope for local authorities to do more to support the community transport sector?

I think so. You mentioned Edinburgh and the trams; Glasgow City Council wants to apply concessions on the subway and local transport systems, if I can put it that way. Such schemes are best taken forward by local authorities. Local authorities can choose to offer concessions for rail and ferry services, in some cases.

You said that two thirds of the vehicles that are used in community transport are private cars. That shows the difficulty of trying to apply the concessionary travel scheme to community transport.

I do not want the committee to form the impression that we are saying that the infrastructure for the national concessionary travel scheme must be used if we are to enable it to be accessed—if you follow what I mean—just to be difficult. We must have the infrastructure in place if we are to maintain the integrity of the system and ensure that it is used for the right purposes. If we extend the scheme in any way, it is important that we have the ability to audit the scheme, to ensure that only the right people access it and so on, so the infrastructure is absolutely necessary. It is clear to me that it would be difficult to extend the infrastructure to include private cars, for example.

It seems to be fundamentally unfair that a 60-year-old in Edinburgh can use their concessionary bus pass to go to work, while an 80-year-old in a rural part of my constituency—or the minister’s—cannot use their entitlement because there is no service that they can access. If the concessionary fares scheme is not the tool with which to address that lack of parity, are there other options for doing so in the context of preventative spend and the change fund?

I cannot speak about the change fund, but I realise why you mention it, in that it is about considering how spend across budgets might prevent greater spend overall. In theory, there is no question but that that could be done. Again, it will be useful to see the committee’s conclusions on how services could be supported. I think I accept that what you suggest can be done; the issues are how we do that in practice while ensuring that the system has integrity, and how we ensure that we can make the funding available.

We took evidence about the difficulties that some community transport operators have in bidding for public contracts. Some seem to do it pretty well: Coalfield Community Transport, in Cumnock, which I visited, runs a number of services for SPT. Is there a role for Transport Scotland and the Community Transport Association in disseminating best practice and providing training to community transport staff in bidding for public contracts?

Yes, there is scope for that. As in most other areas of public sector activity across the country, the question is how we can best disseminate best practice—whoever delivers it—to others. I think that you mentioned the Coalfields Regeneration Trust, whose headquarters is in my constituency.

It is also true to say that business support schemes are already available to the voluntary sector, including community transport providers, on public sector contracting, which has been made much more straightforward through the portal that we have established. There is no question but that we could look at how we could help the CTA to ensure that the sector can make best use of the opportunities. There is scope for that.

The Government supports the CTA to fund its activities and its full-time officer and part-time admin assistant. Could that funding be increased to allow the CTA to provide additional services to its Scottish members?

That would be another demand. It would be useful to see how that would be prioritised against the other community transport priorities. We could take a decision on that only when we have seen what the other priorities are. Of course, it is possible to do that, but the main reason why it is difficult is the general situation of public sector budgets. We support a great many organisations; given the fixed nature of the budget, supporting one to a greater extent will usually mean not supporting another. We have had representations from the CTA on that. Again, I say that we have provided a fair settlement for the CTA and we continue to support it. If there was to be increased funding, it would be best to look at that in the context of the committee’s other recommendations.

Members have no further questions, so I suspend the meeting to allow a changeover of the minister’s supporting officials. Thank you, Mr Davy.

10:37 Meeting suspended.

10:38 On resuming—