Chamber and committees

Work is underway in collaboration with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Criminal Justice Social Work and the Scottish Police Authority to ensure that robust processes are in place to support the use of fiscal work orders nationwide.

The roll-out will not be completed before the end of 2013. We remain committed to ensuring that fiscal work orders are made available across the country and it is planned that the roll-out will now be completed by the end of 2014.

The Scottish Government currently provides £50,000 a year to each local authority in which a Fiscal Work Order pilot scheme is running. These funds are paid through the annual grant to Community Justice Authorities as part of the ring-fenced funding allocations for the delivery of Criminal Justice Social Work Services.

Funding for Cycling 2007-08 to 2013-14

Note: The Cycling, Walking and Safer Streets grant (CWSS) and the Smarter Choices, Smarter Places (SCSP) funding relates support active travel broadly, including cycling; it is not possible to separate out specific shares for cycling alone. Since 2012-13, the CWSS grant includes a request to local authorities to consider a minimum spend of 36%, and preferably above 50% on cycling related projects. Local authorities are best placed to decide the allocation which meets their specific local priorities.

Since 2007 the Scottish Government has worked in partnership with Sustrans, local authorities, Scottish Canals, Scottish Natural Heritage, Forestry Commission Scotland and the National Parks to develop the National Cycle Network.

Table 1 below identifies investment by Transport Scotland in individual routes. All routes have received some degree of matched funding of between 30% and 50% over the period from the partners listed in the second table. Individual partners will have details of exact spend from their own resources in their areas. As well as infrastructure, funding has been invested in mapping, signage and promotion of the Network, categorised as “other”.

Additionally, £7.2 million has been invested by Transport Scotland in the NCN75 Airdrie to Bathgate network. This was a fixed price contract with Network Rail where construction costs for the cycle path were estimated at £3.6m. On top of this would be Network Rail project management costs and significant land costs.

The NCN78 received additional funding by Transport Scotland which involved no match funding over the following years:

As a result of these and other measures, 215 miles have been added to the network since 2007. The use of the National Cycle Network in Scotland has increased from 39 million trips (cycling and walking) in 2007 to 62.5 million trips in 2012.

The Cycling Action Plan for Scotland (CAPS), updated in June 2013, sets out an aspirational vision shared with all our key stakeholders of 10% of everyday journeys by bicycle; it is not a target. This Scottish Government has a leadership role in providing investment and direction through the 19 actions in the updated CAPS document, howeverlocal authorities, other sectors and individuals all have an important role to play.

The updated CAPS 2013 document contains a summary of progress on actions from the CAPS 2010 document in Annex C. Through continued collective effort, we are steadily building the foundations for the longer-term change required; behaviour change in travel choices cannot happen overnight. The available data indicates that at national level everyday cycling journeys currently make up between 1-2% of the modal share, but with higher levels now being seen in some local areas. Sustrans monitoring data also indicates encouraging progress where investment in infrastructure and promotion is being made. On-going monitoring and evaluation is a key element of the refreshed CAPS and is included as actions at national and local level.

Details of Scottish Government correspondence and meetings with the UK Government on this subject were set out in the answer to question S4W-16567 on 21 August 2013. The First Minister has not had any meetings or correspondence with the UK Government since April 2012 regarding coastguard management in Scotland.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at:

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

Scottish Ministers take full account of cycling needs during investment in the trunk road network. The following cycling improvements have been delivered since 2007:

In addition, the A82 Fort William to Inverness (Great Glen) Cycleway project represents an investment of £2.6 million over a two year period (2013-2015).

The following grants have been made under Cycling Walking Safer Streets in the NESTRANS area

Details of the individual projects funded would be held by the relative local authority.

The following projects have been funded through Sustrans in the NESTRANS area 2007-2013)

Scottish Government has also funded Cycling Scotland to deliver the following projects in the NESTRANS area:

Note: *This figure covers the Grampian region, so includes figures from Moray which is outwith NESTRANS.

Note that Cycling Scotland assumed responsibility for children’s cycle training from October 2010.

In addition, Road Safety Scotland has supplied Resources for the Scottish Cycle Training Scheme until it was handed over to Cycling Scotland during 2010-11. Since 2007, Road Safety Scotland provided road safety educational and campaign resources to all local authorities in the following amounts. It is not possible to break down these by local authority areas so these figures relate to the whole of Scotland:

2007-08 £49,391.55

2008-09 £59,703.50

2009-10 £58,967.32

2010-11 £4,843.82

Excluding the Road Safety Scotland resources, Scottish Government has provided total funding of £6,068,157 to NESTRANS since 2007.

The draft budget allocation for 2014-15 for the Regeneration Capital Grant Fund is £25 million.

The Regeneration Capital Grant Fund Investment Panel considered all applications submitted at stage 1. The panel’s view was that these projects did not meet all the criteria or the wider aims of the fund.

Scottish Government officials met with officials from Aberdeen City Council on 9 September 2013 and provided specific feedback on each of Aberdeen City Council’s applications.