Freight Grants
The Scottish Government actively encourages the transfer of freight from roads onto rail and water. To this end, the Executive operates three grant schemes, with a combined budget of £44 million (over the period 1 April to 31 March 2008).
All awards are limited to the environmental benefits of transferring freight away from roads. The environmental benefits used in the assessment of awards are calculated using the Environmental Benefits Calculator on the Department for Transport's website.
Freight Facilities Grants (FFG)
The rail and water FFG schemes are capital grant schemes that aim to encourage the transfer of freight from roads to the more sustainable rail and water options by helping companies invest in the facilities needed to compete in financial terms with road.
Since August 1997, 32 awards of FFG, totalling £66 million (including funding of £14.9million from the Department for Transport) have been made to projects in Scotland. Details can be found in the FFG Table of awards.
Rail Environmental Benefit Procurement Scheme (REPS)
The scheme assists companies with with the operating costs associated with running rail freight transport instead of road (where rail is more expensive than road). The scheme is a direct replacement of the Track Access Grant (TAG) and the Company Neutral Revenue Support Schemes (CNRS) in Great Britain. REPS Table of Awards
REPS operates in two parts:
REPS (Intermodal) for the purchase of intermodal container movements by rail (replaced CNRS on 1 April 2007).
REPS (Bulk) for the purchase of other freight traffic movements by rail (replaced TAG on 1 April 2007).
Between January 1999 and 31 March 2007, 11 awards of TAG, totalling over £10 million were made to projects in Scotland. Details can be found in the TAG Table of awards.
Waterborne Freight Grant (WFG)
The scheme assists companies with the operating costs, for up to three years, associated with running waterfreight transport instead of road (where water is more expensive than road).
Guidance Notes and Application Forms
The individual grant guidance and application forms can be accessed below:
Freight Mode Shift Benefit Values - Draft User Guide
From April 2010 the current Sensitive Lorry Mile (or SLM) values, which have been used to calculate the environmental benefit of freight mode shift since 2003, will be replaced by new Mode Shift Benefit values.
The new values are based on the latest evidence available and will be used by the Scottish Government, the Department for Transport, and the Welsh Assembly Government to value mode shift grants between April 2010 and March 2015. Existing contracts and grant applications for traffic moving before April 2010 will not be affected by the change to Mode Shift Benefit (MSB) values.
These MSB values contained in the User Guide (link below) are the final draft values which require EC State aid approval before coming into force.
MSB User Guide