Transport Scotland had planned to spend £27m on low-carbon, sustainable and active transport, of which cycling is but a part, over 3 years (I presume roughly from 2013 to 2015?). Which makes the annual budget be £9m.
Now, if you were about to hand out £424k of that £9m – just about 5% of the entire annual budget for low-carbon, sustainable, and active transport – you’d do your homework on it, wouldn’t you? You might want a detailed proposal, with goals and metrics, perhaps? You’d want to see some detailed proposals for what the campaign might cover, no? You’d possibly need some back and forth to give feedback and work out the details, which’d generate minutes and emails, right? Surely?
Not if you’re Transport Scotland. No. Transport Scotland, it seems, will hand out £424k – again that’s pretty much 5% of the entire annual, active transport budget – based on nothing more than barely 2-pages of a proposal. A proposal with the scantest of details, and which couldn’t have taken more than 30 minutes to write up. That’s all it takes to get £424k from Transport Scotland, at least in terms of anything that leaves a record, apparently.
This is Transport Scotland’s official stance, made in response to my Freedom of Information request about the commissioning of the Nice Way Code, which they re-iterated to the Scottish Information Commissioner, after I appealed on grounds of incredulity.
I think this stinks of a somewhat cavalier, uncaring, and dismissive attitude both to public money, and to active transport policy in Scotland. I would expect Transport Scotland to be a lot more careful with 5% of their budget for active transport.
I think that’s fairly scandalous.
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