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ANNEX E Scottish Executive documents containing targets relevant to transport, key documents setting overall policy directions relevant to transport and useful information sources

National Planning Framework

The National Planning Framework ( http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/planning/npf04-00.asp) sets out the Executive's strategy for Scotland's long-term spatial development. The Framework recognises the contribution that physical infrastructure, including transport, makes to attracting businesses and individuals to Scotland and to particular locations.

The Framework sets out the key elements of a spatial strategy for Scotland to 2025. Those particularly relevant to transport are:

• to support the development of Scotland's cities as the main drivers of the economy;
• to spread the benefits of economic activity by promoting environmental quality and connectivity;
• to enable the most disadvantaged communities to benefit from growth and opportunity;
• to strengthen external links;
• to promote economic diversification and environmental stewardship;
• to highlight long-term transport options and promote more sustainable patterns of transport and land use.

Long-term transport planning, such as that required for regional transport strategies, should encourage developers and businesses to take advantage of the opportunities that transport, particularly new infrastructure, can provide. Transport issues need to be addressed from the outset in development planning to ensure that transport capacity is sufficient or can be made available to support future developments. Planning can support sustainability by focusing new developments on sites well served by public transport.

SPP17 Planning for Transport

Scottish Planning Policy 17 Planning for Transport²⁸ ( SPP17) reinforces the Executive's commitment to the development of integrated land-use and transport planning. SPP17 promotes an integrated approach to land use, economic development, social justice, transport and the environment. It requires the co-ordination of development plans with regional and local transport strategies and steers development towards those locations where the need to travel can be reduced, sustainable transport more easily accessed and car dependency effectively managed.

SPP17 sets a number of specific guidelines that are relevant to RTPs. These include:

• development patterns should reduce the need to use strategic routes for local journeys;
• developments should not adversely effect the safe and efficient flow of traffic on the trunk road network and other strategic roads - in particular, new trunk road junctions are strongly discouraged;
• land allocations and regeneration projects should be related to transport opportunities and constraints;
• planning and development design should allow for the maximisation of use of the sustainable modes: walking, cycling and public transport;
• the provision of infrastructure to support public transport provision and its integration with other modes, including walking and cycling;
• the requirement on each council to adopt maximum parking standards for on-site parking at new developments - these may be set at the regional level in the RTS; otherwise the RTS should support the achievement of the targets by each constituent council; parking standards can be more restrictive where an area is well served by sustainable modes;
• promote the carriage of freight by rail or water where appropriate, and elsewhere locate development generating road freight to minimise local impacts.

Building a Better Scotland

Building a Better Scotland Spending Proposals 2005-2008: Enterprise, Opportunities, Fairness
published on 29 September 2004 ²⁹ included the following proposals directly relevant to regional transport:

• Increase passenger journeys on the Scottish rail network by an average of 2% each year.
• Increase local bus journeys by an average of 1% each year.
• 70% of the Scottish Executive transport spending to go on public transport over the period of the long-term investment plan.
• Transfer a further 2 million lorry miles per year from road to rail or water.
• To reduce the number of serious and fatal road accident casualties by 40% overall and by 50% for children by 2010 compared with the 1994-98 averages.

Road traffic reduction

The Scottish Executive has set a high-level aspirational target to stabilise road traffic (in vehicle kilometres) at 2001 levels by 2021.

There is an opportunity for local authorities, as members of RTPs, to use the RTS to take a collective approach to the achievement of road traffic reduction targets. This could mean greater co-operation on incentive measures to promote alternatives (park and ride, cycle facilities etc) and measures to disincentivise private, in particular single-occupancy, car use (consistent approaches to parking policies, road charging etc).

Cycling

The Scottish Executive currently has a target, from the UK National Cycle Strategy, to quadruple cycle use between 1996 and 2012.

Framework for Economic Development in Scotland

The Framework for Economic Development in Scotland ³⁰ ( FEDS) is the overarching framework for the Executive's economic development policy. It sets out the Executive's vision - that economic development should raise the quality of life of Scotland's people through increasing economic opportunities for all - and highlights sustainable improvements in productivity as the key to achieving this vision. The importance of a highly developed and effective transport infrastructure is recognised throughout the Framework. A well-developed transport system is central to joining business to business, consumer to business, and ensuring the efficient movement of goods and people to the right places at the right times.

Strategic documents related to the needs of specific key sectors include:

• The Framework for Tourism Change, due to be published in early 2006, will set out how we will deliver our ambition to grow tourism revenues by 50% by 2015.
• Going for Green Growth: a green jobs strategy for Scotland³¹ looks at how we can best exploit the new business opportunities arising from our commitment to sustainable development.
• In partnership with industry and the trade unions, in March 2005 we also published a Strategy for the Financial Service Industry in Scotland³², aimed at sustaining the success of Scotland's financial services industry and maximising its impact on the Scottish economy.
• The forthcoming Energy Efficiency Strategy.

Smart, Successful Scotland

A Smart, Successful Scotland³³, our enterprise strategy and strategic direction to the Enterprise Networks, expands on many of the priorities set out in FEDS, including entrepreneurial dynamism, skills, innovation and research and development. The importance of good transport connections is stressed throughout, as an enabler for economic growth and as a pre-requisite for achieving integration with the world economy. Specific mention is made of the importance of infrastructure, including transport, investment in the development of competitive places and the transformation of areas suffering from decline.

Regeneration Policy Statement

The Regeneration Policy Statement sets out how we intend to promote regeneration, and in turn sustainable economic growth, in Scotland.

Investment in transport should contribute to the objectives and priorities contained in the Statement including how transport investment can act as a catalyst for effective regeneration and how to avoid people, places and communities suffering economic and social isolation because of poor connectivity to areas of economic growth.

Choosing Our Future - Scotland's sustainable development strategy

The trends show that the amount of travel undertaken by road and air is increasing year on year and that this demand is forecast to grow at an increasing rate. The challenge is to identify a comprehensive package of policies, balanced across all relevant sectors, which will lead to a transport system that is compatible with the vision and principles for sustainable development set out in Choosing our future - Scotland's sustainable development strategy³⁴, The strategy builds on the joint UK publication One Future, Different Paths issued earlier this year. ³⁵

To achieve this will require a strong, sustainable economy providing prosperity and opportunity for all while living within environmental limits. To secure that, we must break the link between economic growth on the one hand and rising traffic levels, greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of environmental damage on the other. This is something that we are committed to doing, but it is not straightforward. However, the evidence shows that technological developments, demand management and increased awareness of the need for change have key roles to play.

The big questions posed by the transport sector's impact on sustainable development are being explored through the consultation on the National Transport Strategy.

Closing the Opportunity Gap

The Scottish Executive is committed to Closing the Opportunity Gap as a key cross-cutting priority. The overall aims are:

• to prevent individuals or families from falling into poverty;
• to provide routes out of poverty for individuals and families; and
• to sustain individuals or families in a lifestyle free from poverty.

The Executive announced 6 Closing the Opportunity Gap objectives on 12 July 2004:

• to increase the chances of sustained employment for vulnerable and disadvantaged groups - in order to lift them permanently out of poverty;
• to improve the confidence and skills of the most disadvantaged children and young people - in order to provide them with the greatest chance of avoiding poverty when they leave school;
• to reduce the vulnerability of low-income families to financial exclusion and multiple debts - in order to prevent them becoming over-indebted and/or to lift them out of poverty;
• to regenerate the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods - in order that people living there can take advantage of job opportunities and improve their quality of life;
• to increase the rate of improvement of the health status of people living in the most deprived communities - in order to improve their quality of life, including their employability prospects; and
• to improve access to high-quality services for the most disadvantaged groups and individuals in rural communities - in order to improve their quality of life and enhance their access to opportunity.

The 6 objectives are underpinned by 10 targets. Several of these would benefit from targeted improvements in transport provision:

Target A: reduce the number of workless people dependent on Department for Work and Pensions benefits in Glasgow, North and South Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Inverclyde, Dundee and West Dunbartonshire by 2007 and by 2010.

Target B: Reduce the proportion of 16-19 year olds who are not in education, training or employment by 2008.

Target G: By 2007 ensure that at least 50% of all "looked-after" young people leaving care have entered education, employment or training.

Target H: By 2008, improve service delivery in rural areas so that agreed improvements to accessibility and quality are achieved for key services in remote and disadvantaged communities.

Target J: To promote community regeneration of the most deprived neighbourhoods, through improvements by 2008 in employability, education, health, access to local services, and quality of the local environment.

Full information on Closing the Opportunity Gap³⁶, including detailed information on each target, is available on the Scottish Executive website.

The Scottish Executive has also produced an Equalities Strategy ³⁷. More information on how this affects RTPs is at Annex D.

The Air Quality Strategy for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

The Air Quality Strategy published in 2000 and an Addendum published in 2003 set out objectives for a number of air pollutants of particular concern to human health and dates by when they should be achieved. The Strategy includes the following target relevant particularly to transport emissions:

• To work in partnership with local authorities with the aim of meeting the annual nitrogen dioxide objective by 2005 and the objective to cut PM10 emissions in all areas by 2010.

In general, good progress is being made on improvements to air quality and in reductions in local pollutants from transport (largely through cleaner fuels and engines). However, there are hotspots of poorer air quality in some urban areas. Air Quality Management Areas already exist in the city centres of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, plus parts of Bishopbriggs, Chapelhall, Coatbridge, Motherwell and Paisley. It is possible that further objectives covering additional pollutants may be added to the list.

Scottish Climate Change Programme

The Scottish Executive is committed to tackling climate change and is working with the UK Government to meet UK climate change commitments. The UK Government has a Kyoto target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% against Kyoto baselines (1990 for carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide; 1995 for the fluorinated gases). In addition, there is a domestic goal to reduce 1990 levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2010, and a longer-term goal to put the UK on a path to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by some 60% by 2050, with real progress by 2020.

Transport, particularly road transportation, is a key contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for around 20% of Scottish greenhouse gas emissions in 2003. Significantly, transport is one of the few sectors that has seen a growth in emissions since 1990 as increasing traffic levels have more than offset the impact of policies to improve the fuel economy of vehicles. Further measures may be required to address rising transport emissions and, as part of the development of the National Transport Strategy, the Executive is considering transport-related climate change targets and indicators. Further information on the Executive's climate change response is available on its website at www.scotland.gov.uk/climatechange.

In addition to its contribution to the causes of climate change, transport is also vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Warmer, wetter winters, less snowfall and an increased risk of flooding will impact on transport infrastructure and on the travel choices of commuters. This must be an important consideration in future transport provision. Further information on responding to the impacts of climate change can be found at www.scotland.gov.uk/climatechange, and on the website of the UK Climate Impacts Programme at www.ukcip.org.uk.

Improving Health in Scotland: the Challenge

The Action Plan for Improving Health in Scotland: the Challenge³⁸, the Executive's health improvement strategy, sets out a range of practical measures to improve health overall. There are known health benefits from walking or cycling as an alternative to a short car journey or as part of a longer trip including bus or rail travel.

Delivering for Health

Building a Health Service Fit for the Future (the Kerr Report) ³⁹ and Delivering for Health⁴⁰ suggest new models of healthcare delivery which will require new transport arrangements. This is particularly true for the Scottish Ambulance Service, but improved support in the community for those with long-term conditions or who are liable to need emergency hospital admissions will have consequences for providers of social care and their transport services.

The Physical Activity Strategy⁴¹ provides a long-term (20-year) approach, which aims to ensure that 50% of all adults and 80% of all children meet the minimum recommended levels of physical activity by 2022. Further information on this strategy can be found at: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Health/health/Introduction/Introduction and on the SUSTRANS active travel website at: www.sustrans.org.uk

Information sources

Some sources of information, advice and support are mentioned throughout this document, for example those relating to STAG, SEA and equality issues.

The Scottish Executive produces a range of statistical publications including:

• Scottish Transport Statistics (annually)
• Household Transport: some Scottish Household Survey results
• Transport across Scotland: some Scottish Household Survey results for parts of Scotland
• Scottish Household Survey Travel Diary results
• Travel by Scottish residents: some National Travel Survey results
• Bus and Coach Road Accidents Scotland
• Road Accidents Scotland

Transport Statistics publications may be found on the Scottish Executive Statistics Website:

www.scotland.gov.uk/transtat/latest gives access to the "on-line" editions of all publications

orwww.scotland.gov.uk/transtat/sts for the "on-line" editions of Scottish Transport Statistics

orwww.scotland.gov.uk/transtat/ras for the "on-line" editions of Road Accidents Scotland

www.scotland.gov.uk/transtat/sheets gives access to spreadsheet versions of the tables.

Other useful links can be found by going to www.scotland.gov.uk/transtat and clicking on "Related Areas" and "Links".

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