 I welcome you to the committee's 17th meeting in 2019. I ask you all to be pleased to make sure that your mobile phones are on silent. We are moving on to agenda item 2, which is subordinate legislation, draft welfare of farmed animals Scotland amendment regulations 2019 and the code of for the welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens revocation Scotland notice 2019. This agenda item is to cover those points and the committee will take evidence from Murray Gougeon, the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment. The motion seeking the approval of the affirmative instrument will be considered at item 3 and that seeking approval of the notice will be taken at item 4. I should say to members that there have been no representations to the committee on the affirmative instrument. Before I welcome the minister, because this is a matter of relating to agriculture and farming, I would like to ask if there are any members of the committee that would like to make a declaration of interest. Peter. I would like to make a declaration and I am a partner in the farming business. Indeed, I would like to make a declaration that I have a farming business but it does not involve chickens. I therefore would like to welcome the minister, Murray Gougeon, and I would also like to welcome the sporting officials and reverse the veterinary head of animal welfare and Grant McClarty. Have I got that right? Good, thank you. Solicitor for the Scottish Government. Minister, would you like to make a brief opening statement of up to three minutes? Yes, please. Thank you and good morning to the committee. I wrote to the convener on 29 March to let the committee know that the Scottish Government would be publishing new guidance on the welfare of meat chickens and meat breeding chickens on 1 April. That guidance replaces the obsolete code of practice for the welfare of meat chickens, which was published in 2005. The purpose of the draft regulations that we are looking at today is to amend the welfare of farmed animal regulations 2010 in consequence of the publication of that guidance. Among other things, the 2010 regulations place requirements on those responsible for farmed animals in relation to codes of practice. In particular, they require that those responsible for farmed animals are acquainted with any relevant animal welfare code and have access to that code while attending to the animal. They also require that anyone employed or engaged by the person responsible for the animal is acquainted with, has access to and has received instruction and guidance on the code. The regulations make non-compliance with those requirements and offence. The purpose of the draft regulations in front of us today is to create the same requirements in relation to Scottish Government animal welfare guidance documents so that those responsible for farmed animals and anyone they employ will have a statutory duty to be acquainted with any relevant animal welfare guidance and to have access to it when they are attending to an animal. The revocation notice that we are also looking at today is to revoke the existing code of practice on meat chickens. That will avoid there being any confusion as to which guidelines should be followed by stockkeepers and what they have a statutory duty to be acquainted with. The combined effect of the documents that we are looking at will be that the old code of practice on meat chickens will no longer be enforced and the requirements that had been enforced in relation to the code will now apply in relation to the new meat chicken guidance. My officials and I would be happy to take any questions from the committee on that. Jamie Greene, you have a question. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. I want to ask two separate questions. The first is, can I ask what evidence has led you to suggest that the previous guidelines were not sufficient? Was there any evidence of malpractice or any specific incidents that you can refer to spurred the Government into making the change? Can I also ask what consultation took place prior to the drafting of the guidelines, including consultation with chicken farmers themselves? I have no interest in declaring that matter. In relation to the updating of the guidance, that was essentially done because the code, as I said in my opening statement, was introduced in 2005 and legislation has moved on significantly in that time. Just to give you an idea and a summary of some of the changes that have been made, although some of the wording from the original code is carried over, the guidance has been completely rewritten in particular to refer to new legal requirements in the welfare of farmed animals regulations 2010 that came into force following the 2007 EU directive on meat, chicken and welfare. Essentially, what that did was introduce changes on health monitoring and reporting results of postmortem inspections at abattoirs, as well as technical requirements for ventilation and temperature control. In order to benefit and improve animal welfare, that is why the guidance was essential that we introduced up-to-date guidance that we are putting before the committee today. Sorry, what was your second question? What consultation did you undertake with the industry, including chicken farmers themselves? We consulted with industry and also with animal welfare organisations in relation to the guidance. Good morning, minister. You said that you mentioned an EU directive. Will this need to change at all when we leave the European Union, or will the guidance continue as we agree today? In relation to the guidance, what we are looking to do anyway through the process of leaving the EU is to ensure that we keep pace with what is happening at an EU level. However, we have already transposed the directive into the Scottish legislation anyway, so what we have laid out today, I would not imagine, would change regardless of whether we leave the EU or not. I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, under the animal welfare guidance, non-compliance goes to a level 4 fine and three months in prison for non-compliance. I wonder how you see that working in relation with cross-compliance regulations. That is putting a criminal conviction as well as cross-compliance. How are the two going to work together? If somebody is guilty of animal welfare, are they going to lose their cross-compliance as well as being fined of potentially going to jail? I would not say that what we are looking at today is not really introducing anything new in relation to the offences in itself. In relation to the code of practice from 2005, it is an offence to not be acquainted with the code of practice that is also an offence not to be acquainted with the guidance that we have before us today. In relation to any of the penalties as a result of that, that is not what the guidance would be changing because the offences would essentially stay the same and they have not changed. We have recently consulted on the introduction of fixed penalty notices in relation to animal welfare offences as part of the amendments that we are looking to make to the animal health and welfare act of 2006. However, we do not have any immediate plans at the moment to introduce them for farm animal offences where we currently have the cross-compliance system for penalties and where that already exists. I do not know if that clarifies that. My question is that somebody who is guilty of an animal welfare breach could also lose their single-farm payment in relation because they failed on cross-compliance. Is that what you are saying? That seems to be a double-pension. I think that possibly the question is not really related to the guidance. It is related to the current position where you are maybe suggesting elements of double jeopardy that somebody could be corrected of a welfare offence as well as having a cross-compliance penalty. Is that what you are getting at? That obviously is the current situation. I think that the argument is that in most cases a cross-compliance penalty would apply and that normally further proceedings would tend not to be taken by the local authority or by APHA. Technically, the cross-compliance penalty is really separate from the prosecution for a welfare offence. If somebody is guilty of a welfare offence, they are liable to prosecution. As a separate matter, they could also be subject to a cross-compliance penalty. That is under the rules of cross-compliance. It is not really concerned with the welfare offence as such. There is a paragraph in the legislation that says that a person who is responsible for a farm animal has access to the guidance while attending the animal. Does that mean that, if I am dealing with chickens, I have to have the guidance for welfare of meat chickens and meat breeding chickens regulations and guidance in my pocket? What does that actually mean? Could you just define what access to the guidance means while attending the animal? That infers you have to have it with you. It is obviously the same wording that applies to the code at the moment. That is wording that has been around for a long time. People understand that to mean that. It obviously does not mean that people carry around the paper copy with them at all times when they are on the farm. As long as they should be aware that the guidance exists and maybe have a copy in the farm office or have some way of getting access to it, the point is that people should not be able to claim that they did not know what the guidance was if they were attending chickens. That is really the purpose of the legislation. I understand that it is sufficient that access means that it could be in the farm office, could be at home, could be anywhere, but they have had ability to get a look at it before they deal with the animal. I am a bit worried that some of it is quite vague in my humble opinion. In paragraph 38 it says that culling training should be provided by a stock person with appropriate experience. What does appropriate experience mean? I think that there are some elements of guidance where we cannot be very prescriptive because we want to allow for different situations that may exist on different farms. Typically with meat chickens they will belong to large companies who will have experienced managers and experienced stock people who could train new staff or less experienced staff. We do not want to be very prescriptive and say that it has to be this particular form of training. We want to allow reasonable flexibility for what is suitable in the circumstances. If the committee or if there are any particular issues that you think you have in relation to the guidance in itself, I would be happy if you wanted to write to me with any issues in particular in relation to the guidance that the officials in both myself could consider. My concern is how to quantify appropriate experience. What is suggesting is that there are significant fines that could lead to imprisonment as a result of not complying with the guidance. I am unable in my experience to find out what appropriate experience would be for culling injured birds on the farm because there is no particular cause. I just happened to pick that out because it was one of the things that has been brought forward. However, there are some things in welfare where it says that it is an appropriate experience and that it is not quantifiable. There are not courses to allow you to carry out and prove that you have had an appropriate experience. That therefore rings alarm bells to me, minister. Is it not to you? I am happy to look into that. If you think that that is something that needs further clarification, then that is something that we could certainly look at. I think that without it becoming too restrictive, but without it being a millstone that can be hung around somebody's neck who has experienced for maybe 20 years of working in a chicken farm, if that is what it means, I would do so. Another point that I would say is that, as I mentioned in answer to Jamie Greene earlier, we do consult on the guidance and consult with animal welfare organisations and with industry as well. We also have the Farm and Animal Welfare Commission, which provides independent advice to the UK Government as well as to the devolved Administrations, who have also looked over the guidance. What we have produced here is something that has been that the bodies are generally content with as well. However, if there are particular points in the guidance that we think we need to address or look at, then we would be happy to take those into consideration. Thank you for your answers to the previous questions. Can I just ask if, in the situation where an inspection is made or a spot check is performed, perhaps an unannounced visit to a chicken farm, and there is insufficient cos of practice in the vicinity, is the liability on the person who is handling the animal, as you described earlier, or is the liability or the enforcement of it on the owner of the premise? I think that that is something that I am not clear on. In the guidance, it states that it is section 24 that we have in the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2020. Sorry, no, that is the wrong one. It is the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations 2010, and that is what it states. It is an offence not to be acquainted with the guidance if you are the person that is responsible for it, or if you have employees, it is your responsibility to make sure that they are also acquainted with that guidance and that they have access to the guidance as well. So it is if you are the responsible person for the meat chickens themselves. I do not know if that answers your question. Do you sort of imply both in that respect? It is the person who has to make that information available to their employees, but it is also the responsibility of the employee to seek out that information. Is that correct or not? Of the employer to ensure that their employee is acquainted with that guidance and has access to that guidance as well. That is how it is written in the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations. Are there any other questions? We will then move on to agenda item 3, which is the formal consideration of motion S5M-17291 in the name of the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, calling on the committee to recommend the welfare of Farmed Animals Scotland amendment regulations 2019 draft to be approved. Minister, could I ask you to move the motion S5M-17291 and ask if you have any further comments to make? I do not have any further comments to make and I would move that the draft of welfare of Farmed Animals Scotland amendment regulations 2019 and the code for the welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens and revocation Scotland notice 2019 be approved. We are going to come on to the second part and we are going to deal with each of them individually. The first question is motion S5M-17291 be agreed. Are we all agreed? We are agreed and that concludes our consideration of item 3. I would therefore like to move on to item 4, which is the code for the welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens revocation Scotland notice 2019. This is the formal consideration of motion S5M-17291 in the name of the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Natural Environment, calling on the committee to recommend the code of welfare of meat chickens and breeding chickens revocation Scotland notice 2019. Minister, you have already moved it just for the record, could you just move it again please? I move that again. Do you have any further comments? I know further comments. Right, I therefore ask the committee whether we are agreed. Are we agreed? We are agreed and that concludes our consideration of item 4. Thank you Minister. We are going to move on to item 6, which is the subordinate legislation of the roadworks qualifications of operatives and supervisors of Scotland amendment regulations. This item is to consider one negative instrument as detailed in the agenda. No motions to annul or representations have been received in relation to the instrument. Is the committee agreed that it does not wish to make any recommendation in relation to the instrument? We are agreed. Therefore, I am now briefly going to suspend the meeting to allow the witnesses to depart who already have departed and for us to allow to set up for the next item. I therefore suspend the meeting. I would like to reconvene the meeting and move on to agenda item 7. This is the first evidence session on the policy intention of stage 2 amendments on the Transport Scotland Bill on the proposed working place parking levy. We have two panels giving evidence today. The first session will be conducted by videoconference and I would like to welcome the first panel giving evidence from the Nottingham City Council's experience of the working place parking levy. Chris Carter, who is the head of transport strategy Nottingham City Council. Chris, could you just hold up your hands? Perfect, so I can hear you and I now know who you are. That's great. Professor Stephen Eisenhower, Professor of Transport Policy of Loughborough University. Professor Eisenhower has taken research on Nottingham's experience on the working place parking levy. If I could just say that we have one declaration of interest that we would like to do before we get any further. Richard? Yes, convener, and I think that it would only be right, although I know that Aviva has not come to committee, I have to intimate that I receive a small pension from Aviva, which they manage on behalf of a company that used to do my pension. The way that this will work, Chris, is that each of the members is going to ask you a series of questions and will go in an order, which I will determine. As they are coming to the end of their session, I will try and wave at them to get them to stop. When you are answering the question, you will be up to the member. If I think that you are expanding beyond the remit, you might see me wave like that. Unfortunately, you are not in the room, so I can't do what I threaten to everyone else. If they continue to speak after I have waved a few times, my pen starts to wag, and then it launches across the room. Of course, I have never done it and it would have no effect to you because you are on screen. First of all, welcome to the Parliament and thank you very much for giving evidence. The first question this morning is going to be from Mike Rumbles. Thank you very much, convener, and welcome. My questions are straightforward ones. Why did Nottingham City Council decide to develop a working parking levy scheme in the first place, but almost more importantly, why do you think that Nottingham City Council is the only local authority in England and Wales to have introduced the parking levy since the passage of the Transport Act 19 years ago? Why are you such so unique? I'll give you a little bit of background to why Nottingham set out on this course. I think that Nottingham has been following a sort of integrated transport policies for a number of years now. Like many other cities, Nottingham suffers from congestion and we know that incentives on their own aren't enough to influence behaviour change. There's plenty of research out there that says that you need to have some sort of sticks, if you like, if you're going to encourage mobile change. With that in mind, Nottingham looked at the legislation when it came in 2000 and was very much influential in getting the workplace parking levy included in that because we saw that the workplace parking levy fitted the needs of the city. We were very much impacted by traffic coming in from further afield into the city's area. It's Nottingham is obviously a centre for commerce and jobs and a lot of employment. Our problem is effectively peak time congestion and we saw the workplace parking levy as a perfect tool for influence behaviour but also very importantly for investing in high quality public transport alternatives. We identified a package of measures that basically included the tram system, expansion of our tram system. We'd already implemented one line of our tram in 2004 and actually the workplace parking levy was seen as very much a way of providing a local contribution to the tram to allow that to be expanded to give a much more comprehensive system across the city. It also was used to invest in Nottingham Station. Businesses identified that Nottingham Station was not an attractive gateway into the city and it was important for them that that was improved and also improving our bus services. We used the money to actually invest in a fleet of electric buses that are used on tended services and that's particularly important for serving perhaps some of the areas that are not served by the commercial network, places like business parks for example that traditionally hadn't got a good bus service. We used some of the money for that to invest in that as well. So it's very much seen as part of a package of measures. But if I could ask though, if it's such a success and such a very positive thing, why are you the only council after 19 years who've done this? Can I say a little bit about that? Historically when the legislation was put in place there are quite a number of local authorities. I think probably close to 25 that were interested either in road pricing or in the workplace parking levy. But you have to have a number of things in place before you can implement a policy which actually is as a disincentive, not seen as very acceptable whether it's road pricing or the workplace parking levy. I think Nottingham had a number of things that were in place which allowed it to do that. One of which was a stable council political situation which I think you need. Secondly I think it had a number of policy champions and I don't underestimate that. I mean that is very important for any local authority or any government that wants to introduce and you need to have a champion. And also they had a requirement or a need and that was the development of the tram network and so hypothecation of the revenue was an important part of that and that I think is also part of the reason why. My, I'm sorry, time is short and I would say that the shorter we can keep the answers and the more dialogue we can get between us is better. I'm going to move on. John Mason yours is the next one. Thanks very much convener. Asking about the finances my understanding is that over the first five years of the levy you have raised £53 million approximately so I'm interested where that money has gone. You used the word hypothecated just now because I understand that the tram network has cost 570 million railway 60 and the buses 200 so obviously the levy hasn't fully paid for that so how does that work? That's right now take for example the tram system the total cost is about 500 million the local contribution is about 100 million basically it all goes into a financial model because there's lots of different funding streams that actually pay for all of those measures and they are just the if you like the city council's contributions to those programmes I mean it's important to identify that actually the workplace parking levy leave us in a lot more other investment to fund those the total cost of those improvements. Would these improvements have happened anyway without the levy? Definitely not no no so they have made a significant difference even though they're only a small part of the expenditure correct yeah it's our local contributions generally is what we would describe as okay that's helpful and the second part of my question was around traffic congestion I mean has the levy had an impact on traffic congestion? Yes it's had an impact it's obviously very difficult to disentangle what any measure will do in terms of traffic but the figures do suggest that there has been when you compare it with a number of comparator cities there has been a reduction in the overall level of congestion following the introduction of the workplace levy which you'd expect from a from a charge which is looking to impact on demand. Okay so it hasn't actually reduced the amount of traffic but it's reduced the growth in traffic is that is that correct? Exactly that's right that's right yeah yeah okay thanks very much okay next questions from Peter Chapman Peter thanks convener and good morning gentlemen I mean you've already outlined that you have invested hugely in public transport on the tram system on buses and on trains so I imagine that that has led to greater use of public transport just that that simple investment in its own right would have meant that public transport would have been used more frequently but how do you conflict that with the actual working place levy you know what percentage of that increased traffic on public is because of the actual levy in place or because it's the fact that you've invested a lot in the public transport systems? I think it's quite difficult to disentangle the impact that a particular measure will have on on anything but the work that we've done would suggest that public transport mode share has changed dramatically since the completion of the workplace parking levy there's been an uptake in cycling across the board and bus patronage has increased over that period of course if you reduce the number of spaces which is what's happened from about 35 000 down to 20 29 or so then it's going to have an impact on because you're impacting on the termination point of traffic so it's going to have some impact and a number of people then have taken up alternatives including the tram which has been developed in part by the funding from the workplace parking levy I mean there's three elements that really drive this that there's one is the direct impact of the levy itself the fact that you're actually introducing a charge now that is a relatively small amount into the total cost so the actual direct note change from the introduction of the levy itself is probably small there's also the the behaviour of the businesses because the levy is a if you like a tax on the business and it's dependent on the number of parking spaces that they provide so obviously if a business reduces the number of spaces that has an impact and then the third element is obviously in the investment of the public transport alternatives and I would say that's probably the biggest element that has driven mobile change. Yeah well just to follow up on that has the parking levy encouraged more people to commute by bike or to walk to work and be any evidence to suggest that that has also happened? Yes yeah there's we've seen a over the last 10 years about a 50 increase in number of cycling people cycling I haven't got the figures for walking in particular but you know it's encouraging all the sustainable modes in terms of behaviour change. Okay, thank you. Peter, thank you. John Finnie O's the next one. Good morning panel you've touched on congestion can I ask what impact have any that the workplace parking levy has had on local air pollution levels please? Probably the workplace parking levy has been primarily implemented as a congestion measure and we have sort of kept it separate from our air quality strategy but clearly there is a link and what I would describe it as is the workplace parking levy plus the improvements has helped to contain traffic in Nottingham so we have seen lower levels of traffic growth than many other areas now in terms of air quality we were identified as one of the areas that was predicted to be in excess of air quality limits by 2020 and we conducted our own local modelling to look into that further. Now because of the levy and all the improvements that we've been making and other investments by local public transport operators Nottingham now has a plan in place that's been agreed by the government that basically means through retrofitting of buses and changes to our taxes we will now comply with the air quality regulations and that's partly because the levy has been in place. You mentioned a suite of measures there is it able to identify what component part of that the workplace parking levy has been please? I can't you know it's really difficult to isolate individual measures particularly as the levy has been presented as part of a package so I think that that's what's really difficult because you know people's behaviour is influenced by many factors you know the overall fuel prices come into it the levy is just one small fiscal measure that influences behaviour so it's really difficult to isolate an individual thing. I appreciate that can I try another one with here and please and that's business growth are inward investment is able to comment on any potential impact that the levy's had on that please? I mean I think our finding on this is that we can't identify any particular business that has moved out of Nottingham as a result of the levy. You know there was before the levy was introduced there was a lot of discussion of whether what impact it would have on inward investment and we haven't been able to find any evidence that people have specifically moved out because of it. Now it always comes up as a factor when there's inward investment discussions but there's you have to trade off the situation of businesses offices and things like that will want to come to a city centre because it has good public transport access and the tram for example is a good an attractor for people to invest in the city so different businesses have different needs and and depending on their needs they will either see that having a high quality public transport system might be important to them others may deem that you know if they're particularly dependent on cars or or businesses then they might see that that is less suitable so I think there's there's different needs in different areas. I'll go back there look I don't think there's been any evidence to suggest that the introduction of the workplace parking levy has led to any outward investment from companies relocating which was one of the things that was said when the scheme was first introduced that this would happen and it doesn't appear to have and I think Chris is right in that regard and one of the things that you have is a much improved public transport network and I think that business takes to that and can see the benefits of that and so there is there's no evidence to suggest that there is with similar cities that there has been an adverse effect on investment within the city. Okay many thanks indeed. Thank you John Richard. Good morning gentlemen. I've had the good fortune to be in Nottingham and actually I know many of your politicians through an organisation called APSE. Would you agree you need a majority council and the political will to drive this forward in a local area? I mean I think you need strong political leadership now exactly what form that takes it will be different in different areas but I think strong political leadership is absolutely essential. So if you're in a minority council situation do you think this would pass? I think having a clear vision of what you want to do and how it forms part of a strategy if that is agreed then there's no reason why you couldn't do that in that situation but I think as long as there's agreement around a vision then it would work but I think as I say leadership is the key. What reaction did you get from the public at first introducing this? I think you have different reactions from different people. City residents who predominantly those people who get impacted by traffic and congestion and pollution and all the adverse impacts of traffic generally support it because they can see the benefits in the investment and they can see that that is beneficial to them. Obviously people who are likely to drive into not even from further feel they're going to say that they will be negatively impacted so it impacts different people in different ways. I've got another two questions. Exemptions you saying your details you've got exemptions for customer vehicles, fleet vehicles, disabled blue badges, number of employers who are 100 percent discounted from the charge such as ambulance, police, fire and qualifying NHS premises. Would you suggest that anyone who's introduced in this should consider doing the same as you've done and granting all these exemptions? Well I would actually say they're actually in the notting scene there are very few exemptions. I think those exemptions are more around operational vehicles or things that are not directly commuting journeys. The only exemption probably the significant exemption in the notting scheme is the NHS one. Now that came about as a result of discussion with the then Secretary of State as it happens but you know I think you can the beauty of the workplace parking level is it is flexible that you can actually have different exemptions to meet your own need. The only thing I would say is the other strength of the workplace parking level is its simplicity and therefore if you've introduced too many exemptions it becomes too complicated and you lose a lot of the benefits of the scheme. Are we agreeing with that? A simplistic scheme at least in the first instance is very important I would suggest. Right in your submission you said the scheme focuses heavily on compliance with officers working with employers to assist them in licensing their parking spaces correctly and this is the interesting part of your submission and encouraging them to take advantage of the business support available. Can you explain that? Yes basically we offer business support as part of the scheme so that I have an officer that basically goes around and talks to the businesses that pay the levy and we offer a grant scheme for example so that employers can provide facilities for their staff so for example that includes things like cycle shelters or showers, it's carpark management we provide, also travel planning information, electric charging more laterally so we do provide grants to businesses to support them to reduce their liability. Okay thank you very much. Good morning to the panel. Can I just clarify a couple of things on the exemptions you mentioned? They are NHS designated premises that are exempt but a police officer travelling to work wouldn't be exempt, a teacher travelling to a school wouldn't be exempt, is that the case? That's correct, yes, front line NHS so if it's a hospital or a medical facility that would occur, if it's just an administrative facility that's separate that wouldn't be, so that wouldn't be exempt. Can I just turn now to the actual cost of the levy itself and not on how it's set at £415 per parking space and this is often passed on to workers themselves so which has happened on occasion so that means someone on say the salary of the chief executive of Nottingham City Council £170,000 plus a year would pay exactly the same as somebody, the lowest paid worker in Nottingham City Council on the living wage, the fee would be the same irrespective of their income? That's not the way it works because the levy is a charge on the employer so the employer pays the actual charge it's up to the employer to decide how or if at all that it passes that on to its employees so take the city council it does actually charge different amounts for different car parks in different parts of the city and it does actually change the amount that people pay depending on their salary now that's the employer's decision to do that and there are other employers who do similar schemes or quite different schemes it's really up to the employer to decide if they charge or pass on the levy at all sorry there are organisations that have a very sophisticated way of allocating the charge to their workforce based on salary and also on these vehicles engine size and so they have a sliding scale which takes all of that into account so you could be paying an awful lot or you could be paying very little depending on what your salary structure was like and also what type of vehicle you were using but that has been left up to the individual organisations themselves as to how they implement that if at all. Therefore is that not regressive though if you allow an employer to charge the same for anybody irrespective of salary why haven't you not set that guidance to say that that you should make it a more progressive level that based on salary for all that pass it on why was that not included in the guidance from yourselves why have you allowed employers effectively to pass the same along on to anybody irrespective of salary? I think in terms of the the way the scheme works it works in terms of we charge the employer and that's just the way the scheme is set up but obviously we do advise employers on how they can pass it on if they choose to do so and we give them the examples of how they can do that and we probably would advise that they you know they adopt scheme schemes like that they do vary it depending on salary that's that's certainly some of the examples that we give employers. I mean there are very many organisations outside the workplace parking levee zone that would have schemes where they charge their employees to park on the workplace and this is one in particular at Loughborough University where they will charge staff to park at the workplace and there's no impact interference from the local authority in that particular charge. Just on the issue of travel to work areas it would be fair to say that this charge can only be within the Nottingham city council area because that's obviously your only coverage it would be fair to say that most of the travel to work areas on Nottingham are pretty much urban areas that would be fair to say. It goes beyond the urban area I think it's yeah the travel to work area goes beyond the urban area goes into neighbouring rural districts. So just on that point do you think it's fair that somebody in a rural area that doesn't have access to public transport has to travel into Nottingham but using their car but their local authority has no say whatsoever on that levee because they live out with Nottingham city council area do you think that's fair given that none of the funding raised by Nottingham city council will go on improving public transport in that rural area because out with your your boundary. One particular features of Nottingham's public transport system is park and ride park and ride is a very important component particularly the tram system and there are over 5000 parking spaces that are dotted around the urban area all of the motorway access routes basically have very large park and ride sites along those main routes so people who are driving in from further afield have the option of basically driving to the edge of Nottingham park in a park and ride then using one of the high quality public transport options to get to their destination city centre or elsewhere because I think they do have that option. I'm going to go to Stuart Stevenson just to say to members we we and I don't want this to provoke you into doing something that you're not doing already you're all being extremely good on your time which will mean that there will be time to bring more questions in at the end but please don't abuse that comment say I've got Richard Lyle already listed down and and anyone else who wants to come in start indicating to me Stuart remembering what I just said. I've just started my stopwatch convener can I go back to Mr Carter you said that having limited exemptions keeps costs down and I want to just explore that in some more detail roughly what percentage of the money that you take in from WorkCase parking goes in administration of the scheme? Basically it's about £500,000 is used to run the scheme now that does include the business support element so say we're up to about nine and a half million pounds of income about half a million pounds per year goes into running a scheme including the business support element so that's about six percent something like that yeah right and are there any particular lessons you've learned I mean this is something you you've been running for some considerable time have you managed to press down on the administration costs or have you found them rising what's the trend? Now I would say that the running of the scheme has been pretty consistent since it began I think what we do do is we do a lot of compliance work so what we haven't spent money on which perhaps we might have done is in terms of having to enforce the scheme but what we do do is do a lot of work with employers to ensure that there is this very high level of compliance so that's probably what I would say the lesson is that the more work you do in compliance can can actually make sure that you're you're minimising the cost of administering the scheme. So you're not spending very much money on enforcement but you are spending money on ensuring compliance and I just wanted to ask have you had much issues with non-compliance and how have you dealt with them? Basically we've had relatively no issues with enforcement it's it has been and what we're finding is that by having dialogue with businesses and repeated dialogue with businesses we are getting to a situation where they're providing the information that's required and the scheme is running smoothly. When did the schema sorry I think Professor? I'm just going to say just a follow-on from that one of the ways in which they introduced the scheme in Nottingham was to say if you had over 10 limb spaces then you were charged but below that you weren't and so that cut down the number of employers that were subjected to the charge so you have in the region I think of 500 that are subject to the charge but only 3000 organisations within the city boundaries and that made life easier in terms of implementation. Who finds the place the park in places that are liable for the charge is that something the district value or does or is it done otherwise? No we basically write to all employers and basically they're required to fill in a return and then we we've got a number of tools that we'll then use to actually go out usually that involves visits going around and having a look obviously we do have the powers to actually inspect people's car parks we do have a video car that can go around and count vehicles within within car parks so that's all part of the compliance. Finally my last 20 seconds a very brief answer I visited Sea of the Trams on 23rd September 2004 was that before or after the workplace parking started? 2004? 2004 was when the first line of Nottingham Tram was built that was done before the workplace parking levy we extended the tram system in 2015 which was afterwards thank you so the workplace parking came in in 2012 thank you the next questions come from Maureen Mawr. Thank you, good morning panel. Have the taxation arrangements for the workplace parking levy had any impact on whether employers have chosen to pass that payment of the levy to employees? Do you have any idea of how it works with each employer? I mean generally I mean if I'm talking in generalities I would say that any public sector employer tends to you know is generally passed on the levy to its employees then when it comes to private businesses probably half of the larger employers have passed it on probably less of the smaller employers have passed it on is the broad picture I would say. And how has that gone down with employees because it is a benefit in kind is it not so it will affect their taxation? I'm not aware of that because it is it's a tax on the employer not on the employee so it affects the business rather than the individual. So if they pass it on to the employee then the employee cannot take that it's not tax it doesn't affect their tax system is that what you're saying? That's as I understand it, yeah. Is that what you understand professor as well? It is indeed, yeah. Can I go back to something that you said earlier I'm not sure if I picked you up correctly but you said that other companies other businesses for example Loughborough University have their own charging schemes is that what I picked? Yeah, you'll find that across the country that a lot of employers are charging their employees for parking at the workplace. And in terms of if we take Loughborough University as an example do you know how they use that money that they raise? I'm not privy to how they use that money. Across the country I'm not talking about Loughborough specifically but organisations may well hypothecate that to use for improvements in provision public transport provision maybe improving the car parking maybe improving lighting on the sites etc and some will put it into their general pot so I don't think there is any specific way in which that transpires. So in your research in this area professor, is where that has happened with companies does that make them less attractive to employees or has that had any advantages or disadvantages? Well they've seen a lot more doesn't it to charge you to go to park at the workplace but you know a lot of organisations are at very constrained sites where it's quite difficult they you know may well have to implement a permit system they just haven't got the space for employees and therefore a number of them introduce a charge on that particular for that particular reason. Is that then not discriminatory in some ways because there may be people who have childcare responsibilities who need to get from their work to the nursery for example and pretty quick time is that does that not work out as being discriminatory? I've done work in a number of organisations in the past a number of hospitals that aren't part of the have nothing them city etc universities they will may well have and a number do have quite sophisticated schemes as to how they go about dealing with issues of childcare working on deal sites difficulties with looking after aging parents and so on and so forth and so you know it's not a one size fits all by any means but of course the more complex you make a scheme the more difficult it is to to administer it but I can take your point and accept what you're saying. Okay thank you. Jamie Greene Jamie you're the next one. Thank you convener and good morning to you gentlemen. I'd like to touch on a few other questions I've heard a lot this morning about the financial benefits to the local authority of raising revenue from the scheme but I haven't heard a huge amount of evidence from you in terms of any benefits to either improving the air quality or environment of the city or indeed any significant evidence to suggest that congestion has been reduced as a direct result of the measure. Now you said it was primarily to tackle congestion but all I've heard is it seems to be to be raising revenue so could you enlighten me further? Well I think it's very difficult to disentangle the impact that any scheme will have on congestion and on the environment but I think intuitively if you think of a scheme that is actually seen as disincentive to use the private car in favour of public transport or in terms of walking or cycling then by definition there's there's going to be some improvement both in the level of congestion and also in the environment. Yeah that's the theory but you know you've had a number of years of experience of the scheme now can you can you evidence that with some numbers perhaps? We've seen that the level of congestion hasn't increased as much in Nottingham as it has in comparator cities I think there's work still to be done on the air quality aspect of it to be fair. Okay that's fine. Can I ask another line of questioning? My reading of reports of your scheme it seems to suggest that actually what many drivers are doing is rather than suffering the consequence of the levy are actually parking their cars in the suburbs surrounding the city centre causing parking chaos in the suburban streets surrounding and I could name a number of villages and suburbs in Nottingham where I've read evidence of that occurring what analysis have you done on the displacement of vehicles that used to park at their place of work who now park park in the suburbs of your city? I think I think displacement is definitely one of the key issues that has to be addressed if you're considering a workplace parking levy scheme within the city itself we have actually paid quite a lot of attention to parking restrictions and control of parking around employment sites and we have actually put in a number of additional schemes around those sites that might be restrictions in terms of preventing parking around an employment site if it's causing a nuisance or it might be in the form of providing more residence parking schemes so we have actually significantly increased the amount of residence parking schemes very much for the reason that you've said in terms of providing making sure that residential areas are not impacted by displaced parking I mean that does happen anyway I mean as some see mentioned that many employers don't provide sufficient parking around their sites so you know without the levy you get displaced parking and parking in residential areas many areas suffer from that and that's a very common situation across the country at least with our scheme we've got some it's aimed at providing improvements in public transport to actually address that and actually encourage people to use public transport instead of driving. So that's very interesting so it sounds like you've had to actually introduce measures to secure and guarantee residents parking spaces on their own streets as a result of displacement because of the levy is that what you've just said? I'm saying that that has been an important aspect of that. Again there's different reasons why you put residence parking schemes in areas but to protect residential areas from community parking is a very common thing to do but it's been an important aspect of Nottingham and because of the workplace parking levy there's probably been more displacement than you would get elsewhere so I think that's an important thing for any authority who's considering a workplace parking levy scheme needs to consider the impacts of potential displaced parking that's definitely true but I think that's an issue in general I mean the large generators of traffic and hospitals as I've said are a part of that there will be some parking off site on residential streets and you have to tackle that particular problem by the use of WLL lines control parking or whatever. Thank you. I'm going to move on to the next question, Jamie. If you've got another question you can come back at the end. Gail Ross and then followed by me. Thank you convener. Good morning panel. I just want to, for clarification, does Nottingham have any other measures such as low emission zones or congestion charging? We don't have congestion charging. We're not introducing a low emission zone. We were considering implementing a clean air zone and we were originally going to be mandated by the government to do that but following our more detailed work and local modelling we're no longer required to do a charging zone to address air quality issues. We're addressing our air quality issues through bus retrofitting and taxi policies now so that's the focus of our air quality especially. So what made you choose the workplace parking levy over a low emission zone or a congestion charge? I think basically, as I said previously, the workplace parking levy fitted with our strategy. Partly to do with the administrative boundary I would say was part of that in that Nottingham has a tight boundary and therefore was suffering from commuter traffic coming from further afield into the city area so the workplace parking levy fitted well with that. We needed, obviously, we were trying to identify a potential funding stream for our public transport improvements. The workplace parking levy fitted with that. I think the other key thing was actually workplace parking levy scheme is a much simpler scheme to administer and put in. You have to remember at the time Manchester had tried to go for a road user charging scheme and that went to a referendum and they got resoundly voted down so the only place that's put in a comprehensive road user charging scheme is London but I think London is a very different city to other provincial cities. The workplace parking levy was seen as a more suitable scheme for the scale of the city and much simpler to administer, much cheaper to run so it's a much easier scheme for a city beside Nottingham to implement. I would reiterate that, I mean I think road pricing is a difficult one to introduce, of course it's a charge directly on the motorist for the use of road space which the workplace parking levy isn't and there has been a whole array of failed attempts at trying to put a scheme in place and referenda don't seem to be the right way to go about it as you can experience in Edinburgh going back some time Manchester as well so it's a difficult one and I think that the workplace parking levy took some time to introduce was a simpler scheme and one that could be introduced quicker than you would have found a road pricing scheme introduced. You mentioned in your evidence earlier and it's also in your written evidence about levering in other investment for every £1 raised it helps to lever in at least another £3 of external funding. Can you explain what that extra external funding is? Yes so as I said previously in terms of for example the tram programme we basically had to find about £100m of the £500m required for the tram network. Tram extensions obviously the other funding comes from a bit of a cocktail of different other sources but Government Grant is a significant part of that but basically any projects that are part of transport funds they like to see a local contribution and that local contribution may range from about 10% up to about 30% so the same applied to the station improvements where the fact that we could put in about £15m of our local money meant that we were able to lever in about another £45m of national funding into those improvements so that's the kind of way that it works. Okay and just one small last question I'm finding it a bit of an anomaly about the charging of teachers to park at the workplace given that the school basically belongs to the local authority, the budget so where does the charge for the school come from? Does it come from the school budgets or does the council pay the council? To some extent the council does pay the council it's that but obviously there's a lot of academies as well so but that's the same for the city council the city council will contribute from the council to itself but obviously that goes into then funding the transport investment so that money is then used for you know for a different purpose isn't it so that is true but obviously what the council does is it then passes on those charges to the individual so those costs are covered by the individual so council employees the council employees do contribute right okay thank you so that cost to the council is covered by the employees that's okay thanks okay and lots of details but higher education institutions so the two universities in Nottingham also come under the scheme okay I've got a couple of questions before we go on to some more questions from members if I may first of all planning regulations used to stipulate once you built over a certain size you had to set amount of parking spaces has the council changed those requirements so that if you're building buildings or working place at offices you don't have to provide a set amount of spaces to try and discourage parking at offices? Nottingham has maximum parking standards not minimums so we we actually uh require uh you know we we put a maximum limit not a minimum limit on our parking standards so if you built above a certain square meterage you would still be forced to to build car parking spaces or have car parking spaces for those for that square meterage well it's not forced because because it's maximums that they're not allowed to provide okay okay so I noticed in your figures you've dropped on the amount of parking spaces that collect working pairs of parking levy from 32,000 25,000 7,000 spaces have disappeared what's happened to those spaces? I think that's I mean that's one of the consequences if you like of introducing a scheme that the first thing that any business that's got parking spaces is going to do is going to review what parking spaces they have and actually only provide the spaces that they require now is important to say that it's only on spaces that that are actually used so if a business for example contracted and it was only using half of its car park it only has to pay for the car parking spaces that it uses it doesn't have to pay for them the total number that are provided okay but I mean but sorry just to clarify you've dropped the 7,000 spaces which are no longer being charged and used which is I would say is an undeveloped area now those those spaces will will perform somebody's ownership do you encourage them to redevelop to use other uses for those spaces and is their general permitted development regulations allowed for the redevelopment or do they have to go through the whole process again? Basically that yes there are some employers have definitely redeveloped their car parks and most of them Trent University is probably a good example of that where they had a number of surface car parks and they've decided that they no longer require them it reduces their workplace parking levy requirements so they've used them for other purposes and I think that is potentially a beneficial impact of the levy scheme that it makes businesses reevaluate the use of land and actually put it to better use in certain circumstances I understand that but that's in wide open spaces but in in in more central cities it's quite difficult if you throw up two spaces to find an alternative use for them unless you're going to rent them out for car parking to other people which are then not part of your business could be a separate business and leased out I mean they tend to be what I call smaller car parks sort of 50 hundred spaces those sort of sizes that get redeveloped or you know people might put an extension on their building or you know play things like that so that's how I would say that sort of companies reevaluate the spaces that they have but yep in Fennis I'm trying to get to the to the smaller one you know if it's 11 paces you charge on closing off one gets you out of the whole thing yeah that's definitely happened you know if people probably are on the margins of having 11 or 12 they probably you know they will have repurposed one you put a bit of landscaping in or you repurpose it for a disabled space or an operational space that's definitely happened and you know that's that's we accept that that's part of the scheme okay so my final question just on that before we move back to questions is do you have any evidence to what those 7 000 spaces that have come out of workplace parking levy have been used for and redeveloped to? I would be able to there's definitely been examples we could show of where spaces have been redeveloped I couldn't do that for the full 7 000 but I mean it'll be a combination of some larger car parks being redeveloped but also then some marginal spaces just being no longer used some would just be redundant and some would just be redundant that's right okay and I'm being very naughty here but as convener I can get away with it because I can criticise myself afterwards it's just the fact that if you've got if business rates are based on the property values which they are and and the rental values of the property have you seen any reduction in the rental values for properties where there are large working place parking levies so there's been no revaluation by the assessor of those properties or you're not aware of any significant numbers okay okay we'll get back now around the committee so Richard Lyle's got one followed by Mike Rumbles yes so you mean bus operator is not to him city transport and that's still in public ownership would you agree or not agree that you have to have a good transport system in place to introduce a working parking levy and now that this levy has been introduced in Nottingham that it has helped you to improve your bus and tram routes and make public transport better I think it is very important to have high quality alternatives in place I think that was something that the public demands um so I mean whether or not you have to have it all in place you know our argument was that we had a good public transport system in place we wanted to make it better um and that was very much the reason why we have to introduce the levy I mean if you had an already absolutely excellent public transport system people would probably say why do you need to have the levy as well but I mean it was about that investment it was very important so you have to you have to have a good public transport in place first that was important for Nottingham thank you Mike you are next very much convenient could I first will compliment you both on the evidence you have given the committee I think has been excellent but I have to tell you that it's left me somewhat perplexed because you've been operating this system for seven years it sounds good it's very positive the the evidence that you've given to achieve the aims of the exercise but I'm still perplexed because I'll tell you why it goes back to my earlier question which I didn't really get to the bottom of and I'd like to have another go at it if you've been operating this system for seven years why is it that not one single authority in England throughout England and Wales has copied you has done what you're doing because I would have thought if it was such a prime example that it would be people be falling over themselves to copy it I agree with you totally I'm perplexed as to why that hasn't been the case when this legislation came in in 2000 I you know but it's case also for road pricing because they came at the same time you could either go for road pricing a workplace parking levy or in fact both and of course we really well there's one street in one road in in Durham we've had a number of attempts at trying to get a road pricing scheme in place in in certain parts of the country including including Edinburgh these are very difficult very thorny measures you have to be very brave you have to have a vision because you know it's not easy you're you are actually implementing a disincentive you're introducing a charge some would call it a tax we've already had some discussion around the table about you know fairness and all this sort of thing which are all important issues so you've got to be very brave I think not to go very brave if I could interrupt though why is it are you saying that it's only nodding him that's very brave I'm not commenting on that but what about all the other councils if you look at the the documentation that you've been there's been circulated there are a number of other authorities including London boroughs that have gone back to it it went very quiet after night again and I was quite surprised at that I thought you'd find that you know that the first mover impact but then others will look at it you know it will happen but you need to be you need to have a number of sort of things in place before that that takes place I don't know why maybe Chris that's the reason as to why I mean it's been certainly been a lot of interesting nothing absolutely I mean not shorter suitors and visitors that's right lots of lots of authorities have been having a very interesting and taking things forward I mean the air quality requirements and clean air zones which is basically road user charging in a different shape is forcing many other local authorities now to go back to road pricing and maybe someone consider workplace parking levy as well as part of that so I think things are changing and I think there's going to be much more interest in this area coming up. Okay, Jamie Greene, Jamie. Thank you convener for bringing me back in. Gentlemen have any businesses left nodding him as a result of the workplace parking levy? Not that we're aware of. So the report I'm reading on the BBC is incorrect quoting a director of a business, Nottingham, who moved to Derby after the introduction of levy and she said, our answer is simply to move. We've been in Derby and we're very settled. Nottingham has lost what we consider to be a valuable talent pool, highly educated and intelligent people who are no longer part of the Nottingham scene. The local James of Cormor seem to agree with that sentiment. I mean you might, you know, you could probably find one example but you know I'm not aware that there's been any kind of significant movements out of Nottingham directly because of the levy. Now I'm not saying that the levy isn't a factor in people's inward investment decisions but public transport and the provision of the tram is a factor so you know different businesses have different needs and lots of employers are looking to go back into cities now because of public transport accessibility. They consider that traffic is becoming such a big problem, congestion is a big problem. There was a lot of investment in business parks around motorway junctions but now people find that they're completely accessible. Businesses want to move back into city centre locations because there are alternatives in place and that's the way cities are changing and growing, isn't it? It's sometimes very difficult to disentangle why a company has moved. Maybe that particular reason has been given. I don't know that particular case. I'll just have to take them on their word that that's the reason they gave public work to me. Just to pick up on that point and turn it around, what sort of businesses do you think Nottingham has a particular opportunity to attract because of the substantial investment in an excellent public transport system and the relative lack of congestion in that congestion is growing more slowly than elsewhere? What kind of businesses is that going to be particularly attractive to and is there any evidence that that's actually happening in practice? I think that you're talking about sort of office-based large offices are the sort of places that generally want to locate themselves in city centres, headquarters, that sort of thing, regional offices. Obviously places that are close to the station is attractive to people so they can get people further afield. I mean an example of someone moving is HMRC for example of relocating a large regional office to a site very close to the station because it's got very good accessibility both within the city and from further afield. So that's the sort of employer who are going to want to invest in a high quality city I think. Roughly how many employees is that? It's about, I think initially it's about 2,000 but there's space for 4,000 I think in the building that they're building. So just to give some sense of scale, do forgive me of my ignorance of Nottingham, roughly how many people are in employment in Nottingham just to give me a sense of scale? It's something like 300,000 I think of jobs in the connovation of which 200,000 are in the city of Nottingham I think. So that's roughly 1% plus increase in employment where you think this blade a factor if not being the decisive matter? I don't know what decisions that businesses make or employers make in terms of where they locate is based on numerous factors and transport is one of them. The quality of the offices is a factor. There's a whole host of reasons why businesses locate where they locate transport is one of those things. But I have to say a relatively small freestanding city to have a fairly developed public transport system there in the tram of the bus networks and so on and so forth can only be good for businesses thinking about where they're going to locate their premises. Two more questions and then I've got one myself, Richard Lyle. Okay, I contend as a motorist I pay road tax, I pay petrol duty, I pay insurance. Would you not agree that the workplace parking levy is an unfair tax on myself and other people as a motorist? I mean it's not uncommon to pay parking charges and many of the lawyers. But this is over and above parking charges and again in a car park yes I accept that that this is something that's never been in place in our country and you're going to suggest that I'm going to pay it. Now at the moment it's very inconsistent isn't it? Some employers will charge employees to park others don't so at the moment you could say it's very unfair. A lot of employers basically pay a huge amount of money to to provide car parks at no cost to the employees and it's all the people who don't drive who actually end up you know feel like going the cost of that so actually in some ways it's a fair system because in this way everybody pays and it's actually it provides money to encourage behaviour change into more sustainable forms of transport which is actually beneficial for everybody. But you could just say to me let's put you to your income tax up to £10, Mr Lyle. Shouldn't you? Couldn't you? You could do that but then this is all about you could always suggest this sort of nudge kind of economics isn't it? It's about providing small changes to encourage a behaviour change and that's what this sort of fits into. Thank you. I'm not sure whether from that Richard's moving to Nottingham to work or not but it's a lovely city and tell the mayor and other members that I was asking for them. So he might be coming. Maureen, you get another question. Thank you, convener. If we look at business rates, offices certainly in Scotland will have business rates on the buildings and then they might have a separate business rate for their car parking spaces. Is that the same in Nottingham and then is the workplace parking levy on top of that? Or did you take away the car parking spaces business rates bit? I think there is a component that relates to parking included in the business rate. I think that's not an expert on business rates. Obviously the workplace parking levy is additional to business rates but obviously there is the potential that you can pass that charge on to employees and for example an employer could make a profit out of the charges that they pass on and they can raise more money by passing it on than the levy is charged. So again that's a decision for the individual employer. Okay thank you. I think that was a line of questioning which I was keen to take up again just to my understanding of business rates is based on the rateable value of the rental value of the building which would include the car parking spaces therefore if there was a car parking levy as a tenant of a building I would I would personally argue that my rental would be too high and would have to come down by the rental the value of the car parking charge. It's the question I sort of asked you earlier and you suggested that there'd be no change to business rates or reassessments in nottingham. Are you still convinced that's correct? I'm not aware of that. I mean that's something I might have to check. I can check the details of that. I'm not aware of that but I'm perfectly happy to go away and check that. Okay I just have another question. I wasn't quite sure if you said that you had the choice between congestion charging, low-mission zones or working place parking levy and you plumped for working place parking levy because you thought it was better than the other two. Is that what you said or do you think all three of them could be imposed at the same time so you could have a congestion charge, a low-mission zone which is currently being suggested might be a penalty charge if you don't meet the requirement and a working place parking levy so you could get taxed three times if that's what City decided to go for. Do you think that's a way forward? In theory that you could do that but I mean why as a council you'd want to go that? I mean you'd be creating a very complicated and a very expensive mechanism to do all that. I mean what I was saying is at the time in 2012 the options were between workplace parking levy and the roadies charging scheme similar to what they've got in London. Since then obviously the government has introduced the concept of clean air zones which is specifically designed to address the air quality issue and that has come in subsequently. I think when we were looking at the implications of air quality we were not keen to go down the route of having both a clean air zone and a workplace parking levy. I think that would be quite complicated and you know you do run that risk of having double charges but obviously the workplace parking levy is only aimed at private car journeys whereas a clean air zone can tackle other modes such as buses, taxis, vans for example and you don't have to necessarily include cars within that so you could make those two schemes work together but I think you do have to think carefully about how they do and you wouldn't want the same people paying twice. I don't think that would be advantageous. Okay Chris I'm going to push you just on that so your advice for a city that was considering a scheme they should choose workplace parking levy congestion zones or low emission zones but not combine all three. I think it will be almost impossible to get all three in place. Road pricing has a long long history you could fill your room full of papers that have been written on road pricing it's a very difficult one to get into place as you well know and I think there are very few schemes around the world but there is a lot of benefits of a road pricing scheme because you're charging directly for the use of road space it can charge where congestion is whereas with the workplace parking levy you're charging where vehicles terminate and therefore it's a complementary measure could you get both I think it would be very difficult even for the most stable political council to get both of those in place at the same time. Okay so it's one or the other I think is what you're saying I think that that neatly brings us to the end of our time as well so Chris and Stephen thank you very much for for giving evidence and it's been extremely useful and extremely clear if I may be so bold as to say not only in in what you've said but also in the reception we've received on the monitors so thank you very much and I briefly now like to suspend the meeting to give members five minutes before the next session thank you. Okay good morning I'd like to reconvene the meeting this is our second panel session on the workplace parking levy as part of the transport bill and I'd like to welcome first of all Pauline McNeill who joined the committee for for this session. I would also like to welcome Jim Greave the interim partnership director of Cestran and member of the society of chief officers of transportation Scotland. Councillor Anna Richardson the city convener for sustainability and carbon reduction for Glasgow city council and Richard Sweetman the chief officer for city growth for Aberdeen city council. Now there are a series of questions and what I thought we'd do if for those of you that saw the previous one is allow members a certain amount of time to manage their own time to ask their questions and then do some more questions at the end and so without further ado I think we're into the first question which is John Finnie John. Okay thank you convener good morning panel I have two questions both very simple questions and first and foremost can you see whether you support the proposal to allow local authorities acting individually or indeed in partnership with other local authorities to introduce a workplace parking levy and can you explain why if you do support or why you oppose? John you're in charge you better ask who you want to answer first. Happy to answer first. As a regional transport partnership covering the southeast of Scotland including the city of Edinburgh and also as a scotch representative I'm happy to say that we do support the principle of a workplace parking levy however from the RTP perspective we have concerns that there should really be a regional perspective over such an introduction due to the issue which I think was raised earlier by Mr Smith in speaking to Nottingham the potential for disadvantages to fall in neighbouring councils with all the advantages potentially within the city so there is that concern but broadly we are certainly a favour of it as a tool essentially for use in a discretionary way by an authority be that in a local authority or indeed a regional transport partnership. Can I maybe just quickly just say would you acknowledge Mr Reef that there's nothing in the amendment but to include local authorities working collaboratively indeed one authority having a scheme which had implications for instance a parking ride in another local authority area? I do acknowledge that I did read that element but when we already have local authority partnerships established then there is a vehicle there already to actually look at that in a combined way and ensure consistency if indeed more than one authority is looking at such an introduction at a similar time. Okay thank you, councillor. Yeah Glasgow City Council does support the principle of this power being passed local authorities and that was passed with a strong majority by committee back in December of last year. The main reason that we support this power coming to local authorities is because we are the process of writing a new local transport strategy for the city and we are keen to have as many powers at our disposal as possible so that we've got as wide a toolkit as possible to explore all the options and to come up with the best strategy for our city. And just to clarify you view that as being an option not necessarily one that you'd put in place to do we? At the moment it's an option. We haven't done the analysis and the work that we'd need to do to decide whether we are in favour of implementing the policy itself. That work would come once we knew that we had that power available to us. Yes thank you very much. A very similar conclusion Aberdeen City Council along with the other Scottish cities through Empowering City Government looked at powers to drive inclusive economic growth and there were many levers in that including levies but its position is that once the powers are devolved and there is the legislative ability to implement such levers then the debate and the analysis and the decisions can be made in response to the local need. Thank you very much. I can also ask you about consultation connected with this because the proposal is to give the power to local authorities but there is a requirement for consultation. Do you think that that is robust enough consultation or do you have any concerns about the proposal? From an officer point of view there's obviously been quite a quick turnaround in terms of the response time so I think further consideration is certainly needed in terms of the costs and benefits of any such scheme. To date it's been quite a quick turnaround in terms of response time and therefore consultation at the local level. We'd be absolutely committed to doing as much consultation as possible as we develop local transport strategy and with a scheme such as the workplace parking levee it's absolutely critical that we feed in everybody's views. If I could use an example of for example our low emissions zone in Glasgow we have put consultation at the heart of that policy development. We have done huge amounts of engagement with particular groups, whether that's particular business groups, whether that's taxis, whether that's specific representative organisations and we feel that that's a really important way to make policy alongside those who will be affected by it and to build in mitigation throughout the policy development rather than being in a position where we consult on a completed policy and then have to perhaps amend at that stage so certainly if we go forward and have this power as a local authority we would be having those conversations with people across the board in the city with all stakeholders throughout the process. Possibly across authorities. John, you are cutting into other people's time quite considerably. Anna, you missed at the beginning. I did say that to try and attract your attention when time was running short I'd wag on my pen and the fear is always that if I get too vigorous with it it flies in your direction. But Jim could I ask you to answer that question very briefly and then we're going to have to ask to move on the one that everyone else answered. Thank you, convener. Yes, again, I would go back to the regional perspective. A fundamental duty of the RTP is to provide a regional transport strategy and our suggestion is that initiatives such as a WPL should be part of that process, which does carry with it a very wide stakeholder engagement and consultation. Okay, thank you very much. Okay, the next question is from John Mason. John. Thank you, convener. I asked the Nottingham people about the kind of finances of all of this and I think they did 50 million had come in over five years and then that had gone to the specific purposes of tram and bus and the rail station. Can I ask what you're thinking is that if you did have these monies coming in would they be ring fenced or how would you deal with them? In terms of what we do with the money, I think that the amendment is quite clear that the expectation is that it would be ring fenced and that's absolutely an approach that we would wish to take. In terms of what projects it would be designed for, we would have to make that prioritisation based on what the local transport strategy selects as the key priorities for the city, but clearly sustainable transports of cycling, walking and public transport. Right. I mean, can I maybe just press you on that one as well? I mean, Nottingham seem to have levered in quite a lot of extra money because they'd got that 50 million and I think they'd ended up spending about 600 million or something because they were kind of matching and then other people were giving them money. Would you anticipate that if you had the money coming in like that the same would apply in Glasgow or Aberdeen or Edinburgh? Absolutely, and that's the approach that we take when levering in additional funds. For example, Scottish Government, we're very clear about where we match things from. Thank you. Yes. We've got about 7,000 employer parking spaces in the city council boundary, so any proceeds from that that were ring funds for transport measures would be fairly insignificant. I think the Nottingham evidence shows that £400 million of investment came in from department for transport in the tram scheme, so it's one part of a much wider package. Mr Greif. Again, I suppose a word of caution that this kind of approach where, for example, Government just now has £80 million available this year for active travel. It's much increased from previous years. It applied last year as well, and much of that money requires a match from a council or indeed an RTP. If a council is able to earn additional money, say, from a WPL, they have more money available to match what they might gain from the Scottish Government. Smaller councils that don't have that facility or don't have the concentration of traffic that would demand a WPL situation could potentially lose out in attracting additional funds into that council for things like active travel. That would be an argument for doing things more on an RTP basis. Indeed. Does the legislation need—does the bill need changing to underline that? Well, the bill, at the moment—and I think that this applies generally for all of the items in their LEZs, etc—is purely focused on local authorities having the powers. And would you favour then changing that a bit? I would. You would, right? Yes. Okay, I'll leave it to that now. Okay. Thank you, John. Peter Trampton. Thank you, convener. Just before I go into my question, I would ask Mr Sweetman to clarify, because I was under the impression that Aberdeen City Council had come out against in principle support in this workplace, Park and Levine. That's not what you said to a previous question. To clarify for the committee, I'm an officer of the council, so the council hasn't made any decision in terms of this levy. What the council did do in 2016 was approve the Scottish City's Alliance framework of powers and levers in and around city driving economic growth, and the parking levy was one such lever. But the council's position is that if the powers are devolved to councils to make these decisions, then it will look at this lever along with others. So the council hasn't discussed or debated or made any decision in relation to a workplace parking levy. Right. I'm thankful for clarifying that, because that's nearer where I think the leader of Aberdeen City Council has made a statement as to the fact that he didn't think that this was a good way to go, so we'll leave that there. My question is really how could you, to the three of you really, how can you ensure or assess that any workplace parking levy doesn't have a negative impact on inward investment or business development or indeed businesses deciding to exit your city totally? I mean how can you assess that or what you're feeling as to what can the effect that might have? I think the analysis of the costs and the benefits ex ante would need to be done. From an Aberdeen perspective, there's also the with AWPR scenario that would need to be considered in terms of movements of vehicles in and out of the city. Without speculating on your point about investment changes, it's worth bearing in mind that the Aberdeen city economy is driven by about 50,000 to 70,000 daily movements of people into work into the city, so the rural hinterlands of Aberdeen-Sharangas and Murray are really important from an economic development perspective, so that would need to be included in the analysis and I guess its impact in terms of businesses and who pays and how it's accounted for in the administration. All of that would need to feed into the analysis as well to look at the effect of any levy on the business community. I mean you make the point and I totally agree that much of the, if the Aberdeen city went down the road and started charging, many of the people that would be paying the charge are from other rural authorities, you know Aberdeen-Sharangas, as you rightly say. Many people from these authorities would actually be paying the charge and yet the money would come to Aberdeen city. Subject to who pays if it's an employer or how the employer passes on, I think these are all things that the analysis and the consultation would need to look at. Anna, what's your thoughts on the original question? Certainly we're doing a lot of work to make Glasgow as appealing for inward investment as possible. I think we've shown that we do bring big investments in but one of the things that we can do is to improve the transport network further and that's where having ring-fence money such as a workplace parking levy would be just one tool amongst many that would enable us to make the city even more appealing to employers that are coming in. I felt very heartened listening to Nottingham's experience that it certainly is a place that appears to be thriving from everything that they've put into their evidence. I think in terms of trying to ensure that you don't lose business, the approach to the whole issue is fundamental. It has to be part of a strategy so you're able to illustrate what the potential advantages are from the income that may ensue from such an introduction. Hopefully, through a consultation process that describes the potential advantages in the longer term, it would help to ensure that you can take people with you and not chase people away from the city. I'll just throw in one example. I have spoken to a major employer in Aberdeenshire who has several hundred parking spaces and he says that if that comes in, I would seriously consider moving my business. That was his immediate reaction and this is just a step too far. I'll throw that in. I don't know if any of you want to comment. Just a general comment. If you ask somebody to pay for something that they previously didn't pay for as abruptly as that, you're not going to get a good reaction. I think that Edinburgh actually suffered from that in terms of the congestion chart some years back. However, as I said earlier, if you're able to describe it in the context of a bigger picture, of a bigger strategy on potential advantages at the far end of this process, then the chances of success are much higher. I'll leave with that. Peter, I'm afraid that we're going to have to move on if you want to come back in afterwards. I'm sure that there will be an opportunity. Richard Lyle. Richard Lyle. I've got four minutes. I've got four questions that I want. Jim Greve, you took my first question. Should the introduction of this proposal not be put locally to residents in the referendum similar to what happened in Edinburgh? Yes. I don't need anybody else to think. So, Councillor Anna Richardson, how much does Glasgow raise presently in parking charges? Would you not agree that that would also give you millions of pounds extra funding? I don't have that data to hand. I don't have that with me, but certainly it is revenue that comes in, and we do spend that on it. Would you agree that Glasgow physically at this moment in time raised millions of pounds in parking charges? We do have, I think— That's all I need to know. Richard Lyle, can you agree that the workplace parking levy to your mind is an extra tax on motorists who pay petrol, car duty, car tax, tyres, insurance, running cost servicing, so you're going to ask me to pay as a motorist an extra car tax? I think it depends who pays if we look at evidence from—if the policy driver is, say, for example, low-carbon, low-emissions, if we look at evidence from Norway, the lever it used was to waive that on low-emission vehicles. So I think there's different ways of doing this, but currently, if employees need to park in the city centre, it's not unusual that they pay in some way. Right. The one question to all—sorry, I've rattled through, but sometimes the community stops me on mid-flight—exemptions. I've had emails from police officers, people from Glasgow airport, people, teachers, so if we're going to exempt NHS, which I agree, the two hospitals are in the region I stay in, the car parkings exempt in staffed part there. But a police officer has to go in and park and say, gov'n, and the email from one officer said, if I have to park outside, the people will target my car. Teachers go to school every day and do a wonderful job. I compliment each and every one of them, but they park locally at the school and have designated car parks, so should we not exempt police officers, teachers and other people that we think should be exempt? I know why you didn't look at me at that time, because I think that this was an area that Jamie Greene wanted to explore. No, I said I wanted to come in on that. Please answer individually across as quickly as you can who should be in the exemptions. I think that the exemptions are one of the specifics that will be up to local authorities to determine. I don't think that it would be appropriate for me to agree or disagree a list of what they should be on a hypothetical policy that, at the moment, we haven't had a robust debate on democratically. I won't make any commitments today, but I will commit that certainly those are the types of conversations that we need to have through the consultation process. As a starter, I would suggest perhaps limiting the time of the workplace parking charge so that shift workers perhaps would be exempt. That would be a starter without naming specific professions. I think that we need to look at the analysis in more detail. All I would say is that the more exemptions you have, we've got to also think of the administers of burden in terms of the cost of running the scheme, but, sure, exemptions would need to be looked at where they are relevant. Jamie, do you have a question? I'm seriously trying to make up a question, thank you convener. I'll maybe touch on some different areas and perhaps with your permission I can come back at the end if anything jumps to mind. Do you think that a levy such as this disproportionately affects small and medium-sized businesses? I appreciate that there may be, as was the case in Nottingham, exemptions for very small businesses with a limited number of parking spaces, but it's those in the middle who are most likely to be affected by the charge and most likely to want to pass that charge on to their employees rather than sink it into their operating costs. Is there any analysis on that at the moment? That's not a piece of work that we've done at this point, so I wouldn't be able to comment on exactly who would be affected the most. Anybody else? As I said earlier, Aberdeen has none taken any consultation, but I'd anticipate that the business response would be, how is this levied, how is it administered, who pays and in the context of other tax, non-domestic rates and so forth. That's what I would anticipate would be the response. I think from an Aberdeen perspective the reality is that it's an incredibly strong private sector city about nine private sector jobs for every 10 working age people, so I think that consultation with employers is absolutely key. Anything to add, Mr Roof? Just a brief comment. I think that much depends on the charge, which in itself would be quite a difficult thing to establish. In my view it would depend on what the council or the authorities trying to achieve is it to reduce congestion and reduce pollution or is it to make money. The level of charge at say 400, similar to Nottingham, if you're earning a reasonable sum of money, that is not a huge sum of money to pay to park your car for a year's travel to work by car. For a medium-sized company, that's something that they may choose to distribute to their employees and, proportionately, it's not a major cost. I think that the whole response will very much depend on the kind of charges that are being talked about and what the purpose of the workplace parking charge would be. On that note then, what does it mean to you as a city? What do you think the purpose of a workplace parking levy is? We heard from Nottingham that it seemed very much the narrative that it was a revenue-raising opportunity and that it wishes why they chose to operate that rather than a congestion scheme, rather than a low-emission zone. Each year, cities are considering low-emission zones. The evidence that we heard suggested that it wouldn't be wise to operate those and the workplace parking levy, and that was Nottingham's view. What would the point be of a levy in your city? In terms of having the low-emission zone, which is already operating in Glasgow, it's slightly different to the clean air zones that are the English model that Nottingham would be working under. Under the clean air zones, they seem to be doing more of a daily charge to go into the cities, whereas the low-emission zone is a penalty notice, so we would be, by 2022, expecting no vehicles that are not clean enough to be coming into the city. That's quite a different model to the model of having a workplace parking levy, which is a charge, but it's still enabling those vehicles to come in and out as they wish. For Glasgow, we have a very clear strategic plan priority to prioritise sustainable transport. That's what our local transport strategy will be aiming to achieve. That will be done through encouraging modal shift, reducing congestion to enable public transport to move more quickly and easily. Of course, that will complement the air quality work that's already going on. Yes, from an Aberdeen perspective, the policy drivers are key. The city centre master plan, the regional economic strategy, hydrogen Aberdeen, the oil and gas UK's own vision 2035, and of course transport strategies. All of them speak about low carbon, low emissions and energy transition. The policy framework is clear, but the objectives of any scheme would need to align to that. I hear lots of words, but I still haven't really got any sense of what you think the levy is for. Is it to raise revenues? Is it to reduce congestion? Is it to improve air quality or all of the above? From an Aberdeen perspective, it hasn't developed a scheme and therefore its objectives, but the existing policy framework is very clear in terms of low carbon agendas, whereas an Ottingham 1 might have been a congestion-charging perspective. Do you want to answer that briefly? I would like to push on with the next question as well. I think that a Glasgow City Council is looking to decarbonise as rapidly as possible to improve our air quality and to improve people's health and to reduce congestion in our city. All of those are achieved through very similar policy drivers, but of course, one tool can achieve all of that. It has to work in synergy through a strategy. The next question is from Colin. Thanks very much. Can I come back to the point that was raised earlier about the fact that this is a local authority charge and it is not a regional charge? In the practical implication of this, because we have an economic system that derives all the jobs into the most congested cities in Scotland, lots of people cannot afford to live in the centre of Edinburgh, for example, so they may live elsewhere. They may choose rightly to live in a wonderful part of the world called the South of Scotland in the Borders, Midlothian, but they travel into Edinburgh every day for work. Is not the case that this proposal will mean that none of those constituents of mine will have a say on a workplace parking levy in Edinburgh. They will have to pay that charge if they go into Edinburgh, but not a single penny raised from that charge will be spent on transport in the Borders or Midlothian. Is that not the practical implication of this? Likewise, not just Edinburgh and Glasgow as well. My constituents from Dumfries and Galloway will travel into Glasgow and maybe Councillor Richard could tell me what advantage it will be to them in terms of public transport in Dumfries and Galloway of a parking levy in Glasgow. I think that we need to look at those things regionally. I am very clear that Glasgow city cannot thrive without the areas around it that enable us to have that wide travel to work area, so certainly any benefits that come into Glasgow will enable us to offer a better transport network throughout Glasgow. We have to maintain a significant road network in the city, a lot of which has to be funded through local authority revenue and capital. Certainly any further income that can come in, any revenue that comes in to enable us to make it easier for people to move well around the city for those who come in from wherever in the region into Glasgow are then able to move around that city with less congestion. Conversations that were happening in the previous evidence session around Nottingham looking at park and ride and other ways for people to move from further out the city, perhaps doing a multimodal journey. Those are the types of conversations that we need to have on a regional level and I think that is a very important part of that conversation. It is just important in terms of if there was a scheme and I am assuming that there is a reliable alternative in terms of public transport, but the benefits of investing in a tram network in, for example, Nottingham, I guess that the benefits to people in the hinterland is reliability in terms of journey time, time savings efficiency and so forth. The actual investment does not necessarily need to accrue in the hinterland for people to benefit. So, can I just come back on that point that what you are saying is that the areas that will have the biggest challenge getting public transport are in those rural areas where we are seeing bus services being cut. Not a single penny of this workplace levy will be spent on a single transport initiative within the areas outwith the cities. That is a fact. You are saying that that would be the case, so bus services and the borders would not be improved because there would be no money raised for the borders. Public transport, which is what we are supposed to be saying should be improved, will not be improved as a result of a city-based scheme. Is that not the fact? Jim, come in, just because he was waiting very patiently before Colin came back to you. There is a comment on the SPICE report that was prepared for the committee that said, largest financial impact on the lowest-paid car commuter is a potential concern. I share the concerns that you are raising. Again, it goes back to the need to incorporate this within an overall strategy so that the investment goes equitably around a city, not just within a city. In my view, you are writing what you are saying and the legislation, as it is currently proposed, would confine potentially everything to one authority. That would be made worse by the proposals from Glasgow City Council that would extend us not just to park and to get to your work, but any visitors to the city from my constituency who want to go to shopping centres, supermarkets or anything else within Glasgow, because you propose to not have a workplace parking levy. We would like to see that extended to all parking and non-residential parking, so that would actually have a double impact on those people all with the area. Colin, you are very good at looking the other way when I am trying to catch your eye to tell you that your time is up. Anna, you can answer that very briefly, and then we will have to move on to the next question. Don't stop looking at me when you are asking it. You are absolutely right that the committee paper that was put forward in December suggested that the power should be for non-residential parking levies rather than workplace parking levy. That does not mean that we are in favour of that. It means that we wanted to explore those options, and we felt that that would perhaps make the scheme of interest to other local authorities that perhaps do not have such a strong travel-to-work situation that Glasgow does. We are, I am sorry, just in fairness. I am trying to get as many questions in as possible. Mike, yours is the next question. It is obvious from what you have said, if not all the other evidence, that councils would like, obviously, to have as many powers as they can have. That is quite a different issue from councils using them. If I go back to the question that I was asking in the previous panel, in 2019-19 years ago Westminster passed legislation to give local authorities throughout England and Wales the ability to do this, and we have had one council throughout the entire councils of England and Wales take this up. If this bill passed with this amendment in it, do you think that it would be different in Scotland? Mike, it is you to ask who you want to answer. Well, I would like an answer from all three. Jim, could you start? I think that it depends on what any given authority intends to do or what they want to achieve. For example, if they want to reduce congestion and clean the air within an authority, my suggestion would be to go for an LEZ. The workplace parking levy, again in my view, is, I think, a potential to bring in additional revenue and invest in public transport, all of which makes sense, but it does very much depend on what the authority is trying to achieve. But could I also ask why you think, from your perspective, why you think that nobody in England and Wales is apart from what they have taken this up? That is a very difficult one to answer. Maybe it is very difficult to get over the line. I do not think that I have succeeded. I do not know if any of us have actually tried and failed to get it over the line. Sorry, but I just cannot speculate on that one really. I suggest that one of the things that should bring comfort to the committee is that before this power has even gone forward, cities such as Glasgow have said that they would like to explore this further, so that is not committing to using the power, but it is showing a very keen interest in considering the power and exploring whether it would be feasible. But is not that my point that no council is going to turn around and say, oh no, we do not want this power from our legislators here? Am I right that no council would say, oh, we do not want the power? That does not mean that they are going to use it. You have just basically said that, is not it? I cannot speak for what other councils might or might not do, but from Glasgow we have made a very clear case that we are working on our transport strategy and as part of that we would like to be able to explore workplace parking levy. I cannot be any more strong in my commitment in terms of what Glasgow City Council has said so far, but certainly we would explore it and if it was appropriate we would bring forward proposals either for or against. I think that Aberdeen's position is similar in the sense that it is the power and whether it is used or not is up to the council to decide. An observation that I would make is that as part of the Aberdeen city council's bond issue it supporting that is the work of the Aberdeen economic policy panel, an independent panel of economists, and they in their first report had made the observation that actually if you are trying to drive economic growth locally and regional then you do need these powers and so that remains the position. How they are used is up of course for the council to decide. Have you any thought why nobody else in England has used them in 19 years? I guess that there is also a shifting context in terms of the work done in 2012 in Nottingham and now in terms of things like low emission agendas, low carbon agendas as well. Can't you come in and say that he wants to lead this? Just a very brief comment. What you are getting at is another tool in the box available to whoever. My concern is that currently these tools will only be available to local authorities individually, but it's a tool in the box. It's all very well having tools in the box if you don't use them. Mike, I'm afraid we're going to have to move on to the deputy convener, Gail Ross-Gail. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. Anna, you have already stated and quite rightly so that you can speak on behalf of other local authorities. I completely understand that. So, Jim, this is all going to be on you, I think. In rural areas, people have already expressed a concern that a workplace parking level is only really going to work if you have excellent public transport links. As Colin Smith has already stated, in certain rural areas, our public transport links could be improved, shall we say. Do you think that it might be likely for a council such as the Highland Council that covers both an urban city and a rural area, that they might decide to implement it in Inverness only? Can you see that working? Again, I'm speculating. It's purely an opinion. There's a nationwide problem with rural bus services as we're all away. In fact, there's a wider problem with bus services in that, nationally, there's the declining bus patronage. Anything that any initiatives that come in place that can start to reverse that is a positive thing for sustainable transport. There's no one-size-fits-all, and the Highland area is unique in many ways. It's hard to imagine looking at something within the city of Inverness and being confined to that city that will have any benefit to the surrounding rural areas. Again, the thing would have to be approached on a wider level than within the city itself. There's a reference to parking rides earlier from Nottingham. That's certainly a very valid tool to try and intercept vehicles as they come towards a city and then get them on to sustainable transport or even active travel. The whole initiative would have to be looked at as a much bigger picture. That's really what I'm getting at. You can't really just confine the thought to say a workplace parking charge to try and solve a problem within one particular city. The bigger picture is really what you need to look at. It's a bit like a catch-22 situation in rural areas. The investment needs to go into the public transport system, but the money that's raised from the workplace parking which comes first has to come first. In your paper, you submitted policy and resource implications and financial implications none at this stage. Does Glasgow City Council envisage a big investment in public transport if you were to introduce that, or do you think that the public transport system at the moment is sufficient to provide for a workplace parking? In terms of the no financial resources to clarify, that was just the paper that was asking for the powers. That's why it had no resource. Any analysis that's been done up to now has been done within existing staffing resources. In terms of our public transport, I think that what Nottingham said was very helpful. It said that it had a good public transport system, but it had to be better. Our aspiration for Glasgow is that it has to become much better. We're doing that already. We're not waiting for any future powers. We're working much more closely with the bus operators. We're investing huge amounts of money into walking and cycling infrastructure. Clearly, we have the suburban rail and the underground as well. We have the beginnings of a very good system, but we do have much higher aspirations for it, and having a power such as a workplace parking levy would just be another tool that would perhaps be one that we could use ring fence funds for to make even greater investments, or more importantly, to match in even bigger, more significant amounts of money. Maybe Richard Watt wants to reply on behalf of Aberdeen. Just, I think that Jim Hughes... I was very delicately done to ignore the fact that I'd whispered to her that her time was up. Richard, you can't come in briefly, so I can then bring in more in one. Thank you, convener. Jim Hughes, the phrase to the box, I guess. I'm fortunate to live and work in a city region that includes a significant rural hinterland. The need for connectivity is absolutely key to attract and retain talent, and those infrastructure projects still remain—road, rail connectivity, journey times between Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire in the central bell. That is absolutely still an important issue, and indeed a vital part of the city region deal. I think that I'm right in having picked you up and saying this paper that you submitted as part of your written evidence was a paper that was discussed in December. Was that by a committee or by the full council? By committee. At least any pronouncements coming from Glasgow City are a result of the discussion of the paper by the Transport Committee. In terms of Aberdeen, and perhaps Jim Hughes could talk in terms of Edinburgh, have there been similar papers put to Aberdeen City Council and Edinburgh City Council, or are any pronouncements so far just the views of those that have been asked for them? On the WPL itself, there's been no committee paper. The council did, as I said earlier, look at the framework for powers and levers on the work done by the Scottish Cities Alliance in 2016, and that was approved as a framework from which to develop the discussion on devolution of powers. In terms of Edinburgh, it actually submitted some written evidence to the committee, and they are clearly in favour of the option of workplace parking levies. They are currently looking at a low emission zone consulting on that and on what they call the city centre transformation, which is removing cars from the city centre. They are pursuing those two initiatives in parallel, but not yet a WPL. You have called for the introduction of a wide-ranging non-residential parking levy. I wonder if you could explain that a bit more and why you think that it's preferable to a proposed working WPL. We clearly heard from Nottingham this morning that absolutely essential to the working of this is a good public transport system that's essential, as well as good parking ride. We've heard of the aspirations of Glasgow City Council. Can the others tell us what they think, if they were going to use the WPL, what they are putting in place in order, or would put in place in order to make it work? In terms of the committee paper, this came forward before this amendment was up for discussion, and our consideration of non-residential parking levy was simply because if a power was to be asked for, we felt that it was appropriate to ask for the widest possible power to give the most local flexibility, not just to cities with a significant travel to work area like Glasgow, but perhaps other local authorities that have issues where they would like to deprooritise private car use, but not in a commuting perspective. Perhaps they had other considerations, and on a regional wide model, that might also be something that would be more useful to certain local authorities even within our own travel to work area. We were putting forward this paper not to express a preference to do WPL or non-residential parking levy, but simply to ask for as wide a range of power as possible, to enable us to do the fullest possible analysis of what would be the best option for Glasgow. Do the others want to come in before I come back? Maybe just a comment in respect of Edinburgh and actually into the Lodians. The Lodian buses provide what is regarded as an excellent bus service and one of the best nationally. That is a big advantage for the urban area surrounding the city. However, the further out you go, the less efficient are the bus services. That is an issue that we will have to look at as part of the initiatives that are being pursued. In a post-western peripheral route world, officers are looking at measures in delivering the transport objectives in the city centre to master plan, active travel and so forth. I will try to bring you back in if you want to come in afterwards. There is a series of questions. Pauline Neidleit to ask a question and then Jamie Greene. Thank you very much. My questions to Anna Richardson. I wonder if you accept that in many parts of Glasgow in the moment you cannot get a bus to many parts of the city. There are many thousands of Glaswegians for whom using a car is not a choice because either in a public transport or public transport is actually more expensive than driving. I put it to you that if you were given these powers, as things stand, Glasgow is not ready for a tax to work. Would you agree? In terms of the way that people move around our city, we know that we have certain issues that we want to tackle. We have very low car ownership in Glasgow. I think that it is the lowest of all local authorities per capita. We have almost a contradictory situation where, in some cases, as you say, there are some people who have to drive because they have no other option. On the other hand, we have the majority of people in Glasgow who do not drive at all and have to rely on public transport. When we are looking at bringing in our local transport strategy, we are going to be trying to address both of those issues at once. We want to make sure that people are better connected and at the same time that they are connected more sustainably. Is the city ready for a tax now? In terms of our local transport strategy, we are going to be looking at all the levers that we have available. You are not really willing to answer that. Is the transport network ready now to have a workplace tax? Do you not think that it is fairer to build up better public transport links before you impose a tax to work? At the moment, we are working proactively with bus operators to improve the services that they provide, as well as improving other forms of sustainable transport across the city. That work is on-going regardless of whether a workplace parking levy power is to be handed to us or not. We are committed to improving public transport within Glasgow, the workplace parking levy. If we were to consider that as an option, certainly that would be several years down the line, but our local transport strategy will set out all the different ways that we will improve public transport for people of Glasgow. Jamie, you have a chance again. It follows on from Ms McNeill's line of questioning. Does it feel to you reasonable to ask certain groups of people to pay to park at their place of work when they have no other choice and demonstrably so to get to that place of work? That would include groups like those on the lowest earner and group, key public sector workers or, indeed, those who are in receipt of work-related benefits who drive to work. Those are conversations that we need to have on what will be appropriate exemptions. If we look at the SPICE briefing, Transport Scotland statistics show that, generally speaking, those who drive to work are in the middle to higher earning households. We know that those who are more vulnerable or have lower household incomes are more likely to be using public transport, and that is something that we need to improve and we need to have a way of investing to improve that. We are also aware of the fact that, even across our own employees, many of them are already paying to park at work. We have car parks that we charge our employees to park in, for example. Others park in car parks around the city private car parks. The principle of paying to travel to and from one's work is one that already exists. Workplace parking levy is simply another way of facilitating that. You think that it is reasonable to expect them to pay that charge. That is my question. If we are going to implement such a policy that we have not yet committed to doing so, the charge would be on the employer. It would be up to them to decide what they do and, for our own employees, we would consider what the appropriate thing to do with it. The other gentleman has a view on that. It is an important point. You pushed it quite hard and, in fairness, there is quite a lot of other questions. I would like to bring in John Finnie and Richard Lyle. Thank you, convener. It is a question for Mr Greave, and I understand the hat you are wearing of the regional transport partnership here. What we are here to look at is the specifics. There is the generality of workplace parking and there has been a lot of helpful evidence. On the specifics of the proposal, after section 58, section 3, subsection 3—excuse me, and I will read it to you, Mr Greave, I am not expecting it—the power to make and modify schemes, and it says in a quote here, that two or more local authorities may act jointly. I think that we have an iconism for two or more local authorities acting jointly in respect of transport matters, and that is the regional transport partnerships. Would you acknowledge that there are opportunities there and perhaps opportunities that, for instance, regional transport partnerships could take a lead on to address the understandable concerns people have, which I hope are all flied offset by a question that I asked you earlier about moneys raised in one area could still be applied in another? I accept that, but, again, I would go back to the need to align whatever the two authorities might decide to do with a wider regional strategy, because it would have to be—it would have to all work—it would all have to fit. The starting point for me is a regional transport strategy, and thereafter you can work within that to achieve what you want to achieve—maybe one or more authority doing that. Absolutely. With a national transport strategy being consulted on at the moment, it would fit in very well to have a regional transport strategy, and each local authority would have one as well, would you agree? Yes, I agree. Okay, Richard, followed by Stuart. Right, each panel has said that its employers are going to pay. No, no. So what do you say to this scenario? I was talking to my bosses yesterday. They say that I need to pay this tax. I cannot get a bus to my work. So what do I do? You tell me. What does that person do? Walk? I will happily start. First of all, it depends whether you provide an alternative or not. You would like to think that there would be an option to use a bus at a reasonable cost. It also depends, as I said earlier, on the amount of charge that is being talked about and what proportion that would be of an individual's journey to work. Again, that proportion varies, obviously, relative to what a certain person earns. I go in part in St Enox. It could cost me up to £5 or more. If I go to the NCP car park, I need to take out a mortgage to get it back. £400 a year to somebody who is on a low wage. Sorry, I do not agree. Well, the less year and the more impact it has, that is all the more reason to make sure that there are public transport alternatives or active transport alternatives. That is the answer, public transport. In terms of Nottingham's evidence, I am talking about the levy being a relatively small part of the proportion of the cost of motoring itself. That is something that is significant, and especially if, as Nottingham talked about, making sure that it is on a stepped basis, so those who are earning less would perfectly reasonably pay a smaller levy if the employer chose to pass it on. That sounded like a very sensible way to move forward. I welcome the flexibility around where the levy might be imposed. It could be a regional basis, it could be an entire local authority or perhaps there could be variation within the local authority boundary. Perhaps there is an argument there for looking at where there is good public transport accessibility already and where, perhaps, it is less optimal for our workplace parking levy. All that flexibility is exactly what we need within an amendment to enable us to make a full analysis as part of our transport strategy work. I think that I have said it all. If we do not have decent transport, Nottingham had decent transport before they introduced that. That is why I think other councils, in regard to Mike Rumble's questions, because Nottingham had their own, same as Edinburgh has. Glasgow, sadly, sold off. It cannot get a transport bus, Glasgow City Transport Bus. It is slowly on buses, not on buses, and that is the catalyst. If you have a good transport system, then you might be able to get away with this, but I am sorry. I am walking three miles to my work because I cannot afford your tax. I think that that was a statement, so I may push on to Stuart Stevenson. Thank you. It would be nice to get the same nine and a half minutes that Richard has had so far, but I suspect I won't. I have got three fairly brief questions. The first is just a very simple question. On your reading of the amendment, is any power created by the amendment that is brought forward to charge any individual for anything? I think that it is to charge the employer, as I understand it. Thank you. That is fine. I just wanted to get that on the absolute record about, I am not trying to suggest that you suggest that it has consequences for employees. I am not trying to take you there. That is a different issue, but the amendment does not create the power to charge any individual. It only creates the power to charge employees and businesses. The second one is that I just wanted to be clear, and I know the answer, but I want to get it on the record, that if Aberdeen, for example, were to introduce a workplace parking levy, no company outside the boundaries of Aberdeen City Council would pay anything. Is that correct, Mr Sweetsman? Is that your understanding of the amendment? My understanding is, and it was alluded to earlier, I think. The North East of Scotland and Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen is a fantastic example of any of these measures that tend to be done at a regional collaborative basis, and I guess that would be one for Nestran. In terms of how such a scheme might be implemented, I do not think that we know that. Do forgive me, but I am just focusing on what the amendment says—nothing about how it might be implemented—that the amendment does not create a power for Aberdeen City or Glasgow City or any other city to charge anyone, any business, outside their own boundaries. That is your understanding. That is fine. My final point is, I think, an important one. It presumably costs councils where there are areas in which lots of people come to work, quite a lot of money to support the fact that they come into their cities. Is it reasonable, therefore, that in looking at the cost of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen etc, providing infrastructure to support people who come in, that they have a problem, that they, as a council, have to address, and that, therefore, they should be in control of any revenues that are derived from people and businesses who have people who commute into their area? Is that philosophically something that is a reasonable proposition? Although, through regional transport partnerships and otherwise, it would equally, I suggest, be reasonable to collaborate and co-operate, because there are interactions between policies. We have got 50 seconds left, or four minutes. Certainly, with the responsibility for a city that offers investment opportunities that will benefit those who are employed but live outside the city boundaries through the public realm work that we do, which makes it a more livable, more sustainable place for everybody and, hopefully, also attracts in on investment. Those are financial burdens on a local authority that is representing a large city, and that is certainly something that we are obviously doing, and yet it will benefit those who are out with the city boundary for those who are living in the wider area as well. John, you have a question followed by Colin, and then, as convener, I am going to get the last 15 minutes of questions to myself. John! Thanks, convener. I mean, really, to continue the park and ride theme. That was a big theme for Nottingham. One of the most successful park and rides that I am aware of is Croy, which was not really planned by anyone, but people just started parking next to the station and it grew and grew and grew, and it has been very, very successful. That is obviously, I think, in North Lanarkshire, if I am correct, and people are either going to Glasgow or Edinburgh. Around Glasgow elsewhere, there is not that same kind of park and ride, so somebody coming from Dumfries might like to park on the south-east of Glasgow, get a train in, because we have got a fabulous train network, I have to say, but they just haven't anywhere to park. Would that be a priority for Glasgow, but for other cities as well? Do you think that the park and ride side to feed into the existing very good public transport system? That is where the regional aspect is so important, as Jim said repeatedly today, certainly with the regional transport strategy that the SPT is coming up with and the local transport strategy that Glasgow is developing. Those need to work in synergy and we can't achieve everything that we want to achieve without that regional focus and without those who are coming into our city having other options as well. When it says our local authority, and I accept that the definition of Mr Finnie is that our local authority can mean two or more local authorities, should we specifically put in the regional transport partnership as well, so we could say that a local authority or a regional transport partnership may A, B, C, D, E. I will certainly say yes to that, but I am interested to know my colleagues' views. If you don't want to give me an immediate view. In our committee paper that went through council, we did talk about the potential for a regional approach, so we certainly would not be unfavourable towards that. Colin, you want us to come in. Can I just come back on the point that was made by Stuart Stevenson, which was to imply maybe that this, because this was a levy on employers and organisations and businesses, it somehow wouldn't impact on the employees themselves. I mean, can we just be clear that under the bill, is it your understanding that this can be passed on to employees and that has been the case in over 50 per cent of the examples in Nottingham? In terms of passing it on, that is part of the tool to enable behaviour change. The disincentive to driving is the levy being passed on, the incentive to using more sustainable transport is that money is reinvested in better options. It is quite clear that it would be impossible to ban businesses passing that on, because they could easily find a way around that, by, for example, disintroducing charges for car parking if that levy was imposed only on businesses and they were banned from passing it on. We wouldn't want to ban passing it on because that's part of what causes the behaviour change, which is what we're looking to do as we become more sustainable. In terms of passing it on, one of the weaknesses of the bill as it stands at the moment is that it does not make it absolutely clear that that tax should not be regressive, that people on £100,000 shouldn't have to pay the same as somebody on the living wage. Would you support putting into the bill making that a more progressive levy whereby it was based on people's ability to pay and not simply a flat rate to all businesses? I don't want to comment on exactly what the wording of the bill should be, but certainly from the conversation that came up in the earlier evidence session around making it more progressive, that's certainly a positive approach. I think it's one that we definitely want to encourage, but I don't want to necessarily comment on whether that should be wording in the bill or whether that should be left for local authorities to determine. It appears to be one follow-up that I'm going to allow on that, Mike Rumbles, and they're my questions. It does help reading the actual amendment, and in the amendment it says, charges by the occupier of the premises or, in such circumstances as the Scottish ministers may by regulations specify by such other person as may be specified, in other words, this is a wide open door. So if we pass this regulation into law, this power gives Scottish ministers by regulation, which we can't amend, to actually, if they're so wished, to charge the employee. Do we agree? I'm only reading what the proposal is. Yeah, if that's what it says, your interpretation of that is correct. I've got a couple of questions. The first one for Anna, if I may, is, you've obviously done some quite deep thinking on this to work out whether it's a good idea to come up with some ideas. Could you give me some idea of the income that Glasgow thinks it will derive from the working place parking lot? We haven't got to the stage of doing that level of analysis yet, until we know whether the power is definitely going to be available to us. We've been using our resources on looking at what we can do to improve transport, so we have not yet got any data on exactly how much money would come in from this. It seems to be an odd way to go about it. To me, it would be a way of going about what the benefits are and the cost. The cost benefit analysis would be where you'd start before you'd then hone down into it. In the past, Glasgow, like most of Scotland, has encouraged working places to develop their sites and build in working place parking. Depending on the square meterage of area that you have, you have dictated how many car parking spaces you have. Having enforced bigger businesses and bigger premises to make more parking spaces, you're now going to suggest that it's appropriate to tax them on that policy that you have in the past. It's a complete reversal. Would that be correct? In terms of our planning policies, I'll admit that I'm not an expert on that particular site of council policy. We have different planning rules around where there are minimum and maximum parking spaces required for planning purposes. Certainly, policy does move on, so perhaps what was deemed the right way to develop a city 20 or 25 years ago will have changed from now. I certainly don't think that that's something negative. It's the diesel and petrol argument when it comes to cars that you're encouraged to do one thing and then hammer it for it later, which is quite difficult. The final thing on the planning side before I ask my last question is that do you agree that if businesses saw the working place parking levee coming along, they would feel that they should appeal their ratings value on the basis that ratings values are based on rental values and if you're paying a substantially large tax on parking places that you would look to get your rental to your landlord reduced? As somebody who was a surveyor, that's something that I would immediately do and put to the assessor. Do you think that that's going to be a problem? It's not an area that I've got any expertise on, but it's certainly an interesting point. Okay. Richard, do you want to come back on that? Just to observe, I think that that would be an inevitable consequence of any consultation that is needed. If we look at the same argument, the same speculation has come up in relation to the transient tourism levy and I think that the impact in terms of other charges for businesses needs to be looked at in the round. Okay, so my final question is a selection question for each of you, if you may, on the basis that working place parking levee is to improve the environment that we live in. Which would you place at the top of your list to get the best results for the environment? Low-emission zones, congestion charging or working place parking levee? You may choose one. We've already got a low-emission zone as an air quality tool. The workplace parking levee, if we were to implement such a thing, would be to reduce congestion and improve the movement of the city. It's different to air quality. So that's a very good politician's answer, which I'm not sure that you've chosen low-emission zones. Low-emission zones. I think that in terms of city centre, as opposed to city council boundaries, I think that low-emission zones is pretty key in terms of attracting, in our case, global international talent into living work in the city centre. Thank you very much. It's been a very interesting evidence session and thank you very much for the evidence that you've given to the committee this morning. It will certainly go a long way to informing us on how to come up with our views on this amendment to the Transport Bill. So thank you very much and thank you for coming in. That concludes today's committee business and I'd now like to close the meeting.