 Fy golymon i amboy strap embolwyr yn dargraniddio eich uniondi ddiolch wnaeth Gael Lteon i thymiant i dd lingerianne Mor ohon cair sydd weithio targymerio cyrnyddio, lleol i ещё sydd gy commerce byw, mae erioed wedi cael graciasazoedd gynghori diwrno peenau SARG seld. Morch ond mae Gael Lleon contestio yna unudd yd unseenidai cyna yn myfysgu ei fod yn ye�동 yn gerdysiolaid ar oedd amli, hanes o raeg gennour cy fridge ei dynion bend scorpied i gael mwy 정확ol yn fwy caelauer sydd wnaethe continue ag i gwyfyr ac defnyddiad Enquiry sur 해리, do we agree to take those items in private? Thank you, that is viktigag items 4 and 5 will be taken in private. Agenda item 2, an excuse of session on our inquiry into the role of local government and its cross sectoral partners in financing and delivering in encapsular Scotland. We launched the inquiry in December to look into progress on local government level in achieving national net zero targets. The inquiry is also considering yr agricultural systemiaid uchda i rhan oes i eiashiadau ar gyfer y rhan oes i gael ddweud sut i gael ddweud cydweithiool ond sy'n cael ei wneud i'r cyffredinol ei wneud. Dwi'n ymlaen i chi ei wneud i日io ac wedi'u casoddau cysyllt ymlaen i gyffredinol, a d Sierraส Sifol yn y Pannolau. Felly, dwi'n mynd i chi chi'n gael ddweud i'r cythredinol yn gellafu cyfrunau i'r cyfruniau eich lleiadol i'r cyfruniau. kerfodol gyfoedd ar yr unignaw. Mae evolvem 450 ysgolwg sy'n byw, gydych gwybiyterio sy'n bai amser a'i gweithio sy'n bellach a tymp insecurityol ac yn通atiaethol yn barth switcher i'w hawdd ei enw i gael ei anchordd. Efallai iawn, mae'r cysylltu' Llywodraeth permanentydd yminação. Fe oedd weithio, feed yawn, cyairyn gweld SFRE I will begin. The first question relates to electric vehicles in Scotland. The number of public charging points for electric vehicles is currently around 2,200. The consensus seems to be that Scotland will need to have around 30,000 public charging points by 2030 to support the expected increase in electric vehicles. Earlier this year, the Scottish Government announced that it will provide up to £60 million to local authorities over the next four years to support the roll-out of public charging points for electric vehicles. A couple of questions in this area. Is the 30,000 target by 2030 realistic and what needs to happen for this target to be reached? Is this enough funding from the Scottish Government that £60 million announced earlier this year? Do local authorities have the necessary resources, capacity and expertise to implement those plans? I appreciate quite a few questions there, but it would be helpful to have that wide-ranging discussion to kick things off. Maybe in terms of directing the question, I could start with Steve, then move to Ewan and finally Paul. So, Steve, over to you please. Thank you very much. I really rather feel slightly embarrassed at starting off by saying your questions there. We can't really be absolutely sure. It depends. The reason I say that is for a variety of factors relating to the charging of electric cars. Starting with one pretty basic one, which is when we talk about the number of chargers, it's very easy to get fixated on. We need, is it 20,000? Is it 30,000? We need to ask ourselves what sort of chargers we're talking about. The important thing here is there is a world of difference both in terms of performance and in terms of the commercial position between, for example, relatively low-speed chargers. We've heard a lot about converting lamp posts, for example, to be chargers for vehicles that are parked overnight and rapid chargers that might be fitted in specific rapid charging hubs that look perhaps remarkably like service stations as we think of them today. We almost certainly need a mix of those in the future. One of the reasons it's so important to have local authorities involved in this debate is because local authorities are best placed to understand for any particular location the likelihood of properties, domestic properties and business properties to have off-street parking where charging can be provided. Our view is that the people who are most likely to go into electric vehicles soonest are those for whom unsurprisingly it's the most convenient and also it makes sense economically. If you have off-street parking at home, if that's in a position where you can have a home charger, then chances are going electric is going to be a good bet for you because charging an electric vehicle and running it is good value for money, certainly even at current electricity prices, in compared with using traditional fossil fuels. I would also add one of the key things members of this committee will know extremely well is that any policy like this, when we're talking about numbers, we've got to think about locations and the very different types of locations we're talking about in Scotland. If I draw a very crude comparison between the central belt and perhaps the more rural and remote areas, one of the things we found here at the RSE Foundation in a report that we published a couple of years ago now where one of my colleagues drove the North Coast 500, a very attractive route, in his electric car, pure electric all the way round, was that Scotland is perhaps the head of the rest of the country in the installation of chargers and in the ease of their use. One of the things we found quite surprising to us was actually an electric car can be a great option if you're living in a rural area where you can have charging at home, but there is a big issue ongoing about the reliability of the chargers that are installed. So it's undoubtedly the case that we're going to need more. We're going to need a mix of slow and fast rapid chargers, rapid chargers in hubs that are convenient for people, encouragement for people who can have electric vehicles at home and charge them at home to do so, and perhaps to encourage them particularly in rural areas where actually going electric can be more convenient and more cost effective than sticking with fossil fuels. Many thanks for that answer, Steve. Particularly the insight into the kind of one-size-fits-all idea and the idea that it's not just a numbers game, that it's about the type of charging points that that was very helpful. I'm sure my colleagues will want to come in on some of those issues. Let me address the same question to you and Wallace, please. Thank you, convener. Yes, good morning, members. So, yes, absolutely, Steve has nailed the number of the points that I would have certainly picked up on in terms of the points that you've asked about. We look closely at the 30,000 number in terms of looking at how that fits in terms of the other public locations, the numbers that are going to be provided by individuals, as Steve said, in terms of driveways and outside their properties, and then also the role of businesses play in terms of the locations where vehicles will ultimately access energy. That's how we would break it down. When Scots have looked at that, we're considered in the same terms as how does a vehicle currently access petrol and diesel, for example. How many locations would there be that you can actually get to be able to refuel and recharge your vehicle and look at it in a very similar manner? Obviously, it's far easier to be able to recharge a vehicle outside your home than it is to be able to refuel it in terms of petrol and diesel. I think that we've got some really good examples of looking at the practicalities of delivering within particularly some of our urban settings. Our colleagues in Dundee City Council are probably one of the leading councils in Scotland in terms of what they've achieved through good strong policies, strong leadership at the political and officer level, and they've driven that forward really positively in terms of what they've managed to put in. I'm with good support from the private sector as well, so the companies that have seen the opportunity in terms of the reduced costs of operating the vehicle fleets that they have. They are certainly one of the leading lights in terms of a Scottish context. £60 million over that same period, a substantial amount of money, with a way that its authorities are working closely now with Scottish Features Trust in terms of the administration of that funding. There are 14 pathfinders that have been taken forward already, and there's a society where Scottish Features Trust is now engaging directly with ourselves and COSLA about the practicalities. It's a two-way thing here in terms of where we're going to be able to bring into that discussion what does it actually mean to put in that level of infrastructure within potentially a public streetscape and what's the knock-on implications. A number of authorities across Scotland are already developing policy positions about on-street provision, because there are concerns about what you could land up with in terms of the sheer volume of on-street charging locations. Is that the correct way to go? Does that perhaps go against other policy areas where we're wanting to reduce the amount of kit within the streetscape to make it more attractive for cycling and walking, for instance? We're working through that in some detail at the moment, convener. In doing so, we're going to bring that back in and share that across all 32 local authorities, the seven regional transport partnerships. The final point that you were asking about was the wider resource. I think that that's possible, and experiences have been across Scotland are a lot more varied in that, but the one common thing is that the reliability of the kit at the moment is not what it should have been. Getting access to the right people to make sure that you keep the facilities up and running. One of the things that we've looked at is that it's actually easier when you have a large-scale location. Equivalent to a refueling station, so you're able to keep that ticking over. If you're going to choose to recharge your vehicle at that location, you have greater certainty that at least one of the charge points is going to be available. If you're driving to Laird, for example, and there are only two points available and one's not working and the other one's already got a vehicle in it, that's where the range of anxiety and the concerns start to kick in. We're working hard on sharing all that knowledge and making sure that we're feeding that back into national agencies and then also sharing that across all our partners. I'm conscious. I haven't answered your question in terms of if it's 30,000 realistic. I would go with Steve. I genuinely don't know right at this stage, but if you were to ask us that within the next 12 or 18 months time, we'll have a much better feel for how deliverable that number is. Thank you, Pena. Thank you very much. You and you brought out a number of points. It's good to get that practical perspective as well. Paul, if I could address the same question to you please. Thanks, chair. I can't really speak to car charging and the number of electric cars that you might see. In terms of bus and coach, I think that a number of our points mirror a lot of Steve's points. It's about types of charger. We have within the bus and coach fleet a number of which will be electric vehicles, but some for longer distances that might be hydrogen. Are we taking that into consideration? In terms of car charging, as Un said, a concern for us might be taking in on-street provision and on-street car parking or charging that might impact on other local authority policies around a switch to sustainable and active transport and providing, for example, bus lanes or cycle lanes, and that being a concern. I think that with our conversations with the Lakes of Scottish Future Trust and the Distribution Network operators and the energy suppliers, the timescales for that type of activity as well need to be considered. The animals have plans that stretch years into the future. In consideration of new sites for charging that car or bus, those conversations need to start now. If you want to see that progress in the next three years, there are some big challenges ahead for the car and for the bus in terms of providing the infrastructure for charging. For hydrogen coach, for example, hydrogen is probably the fuel that most will be attracted to for longer distance journeys. If we don't have the hydrogen charging infrastructure there, then that location is no longer accessible by coach, so it's something worth considering. Mark Ruskell has a supplemental in the area. Mark Ruskell, over to you please. When you were talking about the charging infrastructure, I wanted to ask you and Steve about the consistency of the roll-out of charging infrastructure around the country. In my experiences, you can go to one area like Stirling or Dundee and it's excellent. You go to Edinburgh and it's very poor, and that can build in the range anxiety. What do you see as the progress that can be made in terms of having consistent EV infrastructure roll-out? At the moment, we still seem to be in a phase where it's being led by local authorities that have a particular interest and have perhaps gone to the path finder funding and are forging ahead. I'll maybe just put that to you given that it's a local authority question. Thank you very much, Mark Ruskell. That's the code of where we are across the 32 authorities plus the seven RTPs. When we map across them, we see the ones who have taken that early strategic decision that they're looking to access the funding that's been made available from the Scottish Government, but they're also putting in their own capital funding as well, where it's deemed appropriate. In terms of the consistency that we're going to get, the pathfinders will definitely help. Over the past couple of months, we have been having really good, positive, detailed discussions with the Scottish Features Trust, because they're overseeing it and they want to make sure that we start to get that level of consistency. In terms of the learning that's going on already, certainly we've had detailed sessions involving local authority engineers, particularly from those authorities who haven't necessarily been at the forefront of putting in the infrastructure, who are learning now from the others. That's literally happening right now. Was it complex or complicated? Probably complicated mapping exercise of what the current provision is in different locations. That's being shared out across authorities. That then still requires a decision to be able to mobilise people to go and do that, but that's where the seed funding of the 60 million enabled to access that means that an authority that is struggling will have a number of options. They can then go back to the Scottish Features Trust and say that we're going to need more help on that to develop a programme of activity over the next 12, 18, 24 months. Potentially that might involve going to the market. It might involve going to one of the other local authorities who have already developed that expertise. That's happened in other sectors in terms of the experience of Scots, so that's not unusual either. You will get that help across boundaries. The one thing that I would say is that there's a recognition of the importance of the wider issue around moving to net zero and tackling climate change across all of the Scots membership. Perhaps the EV one is one of the earliest ones. There's a tangible thing there where, because that's so often within the fabric of the odd network, it becomes very real very quickly. It impacts on individuals, it impacts within a community and it's something that then comes through the post boxes of individual elected members at ward level. It becomes very real very quickly but it becomes positive very quickly when you're actually able to make sure that you put something in the local town centre car park that is available. It has the additional thing whereby is that the better place to put some of that type of infrastructure because it takes people who have chosen to use a private car to access a town centre but they know that they can then recharge their vehicle and they can go about their business in that area. It's just joining up all those different bits. That's something that, as a society, we do quite a lot of. It's one that, as I say, six, 12, 18 months down the line, we're going to be looking closely at what the progress is across all of the different authorities. If there are ones that are a bit behind then ourselves, SFTs, Scottish Government and others are there to help to try and help them along the same path. Okay, thanks very much. Back to you, convener. Thank you very much, Mark. Liam Kerr also has a supplemental in this area, Liam. Thank you, convener. Very briefly, Steve Gooding, just to pick up on your comments earlier. It seems to me getting the charges in place is all well and good but I was reading last week about the CEO from Rivian who seemed to be warning of a battery and materials shortage and then I think I was also reading Ellen Muskat Tesla saying that the lithium prices are going through the roof. Do you recognise that? If so, is there any projection being done on how that will impact the 30,000 charger's requirement and indeed EV uptake over the next, let's say, 10 years? Steve, did you hear that question? Yes, I did. I'm just waiting for the unmute to come on. It's exactly the right question to ask and it's a very hard one to answer. The reason for that is that you're right to pick up on the fact that there are some difficulties in the supply chain for the creation of batteries in particular. Batteries require lithium, they require what are called rare rare metals, called rare for a reason. The global supply of those has been affected by some of the very unfortunate things that are happening around the world at the moment. What we really need is a breakthrough in battery technology and a huge amount of money is being thrown at that, not just in this country but around the world. Without that breakthrough, without finding different materials from which batteries can be constructed or indeed different technology in the way that batteries are created, we are going to find ourselves probably running up against constraints in the number of vehicles that are built globally but are then allocated to the UK market. We've done some work in the foundation. We've done it in combination with the English Electric Vehicle Energy Task Force to look at the likely availability and then take up of electric vehicles. All I can really say about that is that there's a wide range of future possibilities, which is why it is so hard to answer that 30,000 question that the convener posed in the first place. However, I think that the likelihood is that we're seeing more and more models coming to market. The auto companies are investing hugely. We've seen Volkswagen putting a lot of money into its own battery manufacturing capability. We're seeing other investment going in in this country that's Government supported. It doesn't look like the batteries themselves are the constraint at the moment. Actually, the constraint on getting new cars at the moment is a shortage globally of semiconductors and a shortage of wiring looms, which were until very recently a major export from the Ukraine. There are uncertainties there, but if I may just add one further thought, which harks back to a previous point. It's that we need to think about the cars. We also need to think about commercial vehicles and not just buses here. When we're thinking about charge points, when we're thinking about vans, other vehicles that enable our towns and cities to function, many cabs and taxis if people are to be encouraged out of their private cars and perhaps into different forms of mass transit, perhaps with smaller vehicles, and think about how they're going to be serviced as well. Maybe some of the differences between local authorities in terms of numbers of chargers and locations of chargers comes back to the balance, which I'm sure we're going to be getting on to, between whether it's better to encourage people with cars to switch to electric or whether it's better to try to encourage people who've got cars now not to perhaps own their own car but to use a mix of public transport and maybe join a car club for the occasional longer trip they need to make. Thank you, that's fascinating. Thank you, convener. Thank you, Liam. I think that Paul White wanted to come in on this question as well, so Paul, I'll bring you in to address Liam Kerr's question, please. Thank you, convener. Just to reiterate that point, as it stands for, the bus sector, we are definitely seeing the relative certain parts of the manufacturing process impacting on price. When you're looking at the model for bus funding to allow us to transition to net zero, it is based upon the cost of the vehicle reducing and the benefits of switching to electric, as opposed to paying for diesel. As we're not seeing that reduction in price of vehicle and the cost of reducing your vehicle is increasing, so the business case for that accelerated investment to net zero is difficult to stack up, because for a fact, as a reason, the relative certain elements are required for those vehicles. Great. Thank you very much, Paul. I had a couple of questions following up on the initial discussions on, from a local authority perspective. We've heard of the benefits from local authorities having local knowledge, which is going to be vital in this area. I wanted to explore some of the highlights. Mark Ruskell spoke about consistency across local authorities. There are 32 different local authorities in Scotland. Are we likely to see consistent technologies used across local authorities? Is this hardwired into the system, or is there a risk that different technologies may be used with the result of some confusion there? A kind of related question about economies of scale, are we seeing local authorities adopting individual procurement policies here, or are we seeing some pooling of resources and, therefore, benefiting from economies of scale in procuring what is expensive equipment, I assume? Perhaps I can start with you, and then, if Stephen Paul wants to come in, please indicate. Okay, thank you, convener. The second one, first, is the procurement model. Across the local authority side of things, we utilise heavily utilised framework-type contracts that are administered by Scotland XL. On the vehicle procurement side of things, for our own fleet, that has been in place for a number of years. I think that it might even be in its third iteration for the actual building and the types of vehicles across our own fleets. More recently, there has been developmental work to try and address that issue around the type of kit to be deployed on the street or within car parks. Anybody who utilises an electric vehicle and goes to a location will see that there is definitely a variety of types of chargers there. They have changed year on year, and you can see that both the size, number of cables out of each individual one can vary from place to place. That is also one of the elements that Scottish Futures Trust is working on at the moment to look at that. There are some parts of Scotland where joint procurement teams are very much on their radar already to try and make sure that they can negotiate as good a price as possible for bringing the kits into the location and then to get the installation. It is about securing the kit, the installation process and the maintenance, so that is the type of work that has been developed at the moment to be shared through both SFT and the work of Scotland Excel so that any local authority can tap into that expertise so that they are not necessarily reinvented. One other element around procurement is going back to one of the earlier points about the maintenance regime and looking after it. That is part of the procurement as well. The potential for an operating part to any contract is also the type of thing that would be looked at so that it is not then falling to potentially a local authority set of officers who perhaps are already looking after other pieces of equipment. It might be the street lighting network, because that is where the schools often sit. The requirements that would be placed on looking after that type of kit will often mean that it is a specialist contractor that you require to gain access to. That is then back into that rural versus urban for locations that are at the end of the supply chain and that are further away. That is to build that into the contract arrangements as well. There is work going on to try and develop that. Those contracts, for instance, would tend to be updated every two or three years in terms of a framework contract that an authority can dip into. Those contracts will be reviewed regularly. The way that they tend to operate is that the practitioners feed into an overall group that then feedback their experiences working under that contract so that they can then improve it the next time around. I do the fact that I addressed those initial points in terms of getting that technology better in the future and dealing with the scale and procurement challenges. That is very helpful. Before I bring Stephen in, I just wanted to clarify a couple of points. You mentioned framework agreements on the procurement side that allow local authorities to achieve that economy of scale. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they sound optional in nature. They are not necessarily hardwired in terms of local authorities must use those procurement frameworks. In practice, very roughly, what percentage of local authorities use those procurement frameworks in order to ensure consistency and achieve economies of scale? You are correct, convener. They are not a must-do. They are optional. It will be down to the individual authority to take a policy position. Some authorities might say, you know what, we are essentially supporting that collaborative approach through something like Scotland Excel. We are going to go there as our first choice to see what value that gives us, but there is always the alternative to then undertake a separate procurement exercise. Potentially, there might be two or three authorities outwith the Scotland Excel model. I am afraid that I do not have any statistics that would give you a feel for just how many are currently utilising them, but we can certainly take that away, convener, and come back. We can ask around our network to see what the current usage of those framework contracts are for vehicle procurement and for the installation of the EV charging infrastructure. I am happy to take that away, convener. That would be great. I very much appreciate that. I think that Steve MacDonald wanted to come in on some of those issues. Yes, I just wanted to pick up. You asked about the technologies. I think that it is really important that we look at this both through the lens of the if you like the citizen, the user, the driver, the motorist, whoever is looking after the vehicle, as well as through the lens of the local authority that is trying to secure best value for money for public investment. From the user perspective, there is definitely a push from national government and in England, I know, to ensure that charged points are as easy to engage with as possible by the user. That is a mix of reliability. We have talked about that a bit before, but also recognising the fact that if I go to fill up my old petrol car, I can go to a service station, I can use my credit card, I do not have to have a particular loyalty card, I do not have to connect with my mobile phone or any of those things. I can just turn up, fill up the tank pay and I am on my way again. That has not been the case to date with many of the publicly available charge points. We need a greater consistency in that sense. Whether the actual technology behind the screener, if you like, behind the kit has to be consistent—well, it has to work consistently—is the most important thing. I think that one of the challenges that has come up here is that many of us are familiar with what is effectively version 1 of public charges, not all of which were designed to be particularly user-friendly, not all of which have turned out to be particularly reliable. Now we need investment to replace those with the next generation of charges, which by and large are better, but also to have a better informed view of where they should go. Many of the charges that were installed originally, both in Scotland and around the UK, were installed in places where they could be, perhaps in carparks that local authorities themselves own, rather than necessarily in the places where people who got electric cars are most likely to use them. Part of that thinking that we are just developing, I would say, at the moment is to think if you can use a rapid charger to recharge your vehicle in about 20 minutes, why don't we have to think about where people go for about 20 to 30 minutes? One of the places people go is supermarket, so maybe we should be thinking not to have free-to-use slow chargers as just a side benefit in supermarkets, but maybe supermarket carparks are some of the best locations for rapid chargers looking ahead. Thank you very much, Stephen. I know in the context of supermarkets, the concept of permitted developments has been quite important in order to achieve a fast roll-out, and maybe we can come back to that point. I wanted to bring in Fiona Hyslop at this stage. Fiona, please. Good morning and thank you for joining us. I want to ask about local authorities and how they can best support the delivery of integrated public and active travel networks. Do they have a role and what should their role be in coordinating information flows, ticketing and the development of transport hubs? I want to come to you and Wallace first, and perhaps to bring it to life. If you can maybe reflect on what that means for cities, but also what does that mean for semi-rural areas. For example, cities that are challenged as multimodal, but also in terms of semi-rurals. For example, there is a proposal for park and ride on the M8 at the Heartlands Junction and the new junction at Winchborough on the M9. Should that be the role of the local authority or would you see that as a transport partnership role? If you can maybe reflect on that. I will come to Paul and if you can think about it, the integrated transport hubs from a bus perspective. Finally, Steve Gooding, if you can reflect particularly on cars and park and ride and what you would expect. You could also perhaps bring in the concept of that shared car electric vehicle reference that you made earlier on. First of all to you and Wallace, please. Okay, thank you. A couple of things in there. From one of the strengths that we have as a network is the seven regional transport partnerships and all 32 local authorities. That is a partnership working for delivering things at that large scale. There are certainly two sites that you refer to that fall clearly within the remit of national, regional and local in terms of how they deliver those. I am not that familiar with whether they may or may not be within some of the bus partnership fund proposals for those locations. If they are, that will automatically mean that the local authorities and the regional transport partnerships will already be working on those types of developments. I can talk with my day job hat on that that is a case in the north east of Scotland for those types of large-scale passenger transport interchanges that allow people to go to that central location, know that they can then change on to either from one bus service on to another. If they are able to cycle or walk to the location then to get on to public transport. The design of what have been traditionally seen as park and ride sites has certainly evolved over a number of years. That is on the back of experiences from local authorities in terms of working with the passenger transport operating companies in their areas but also the experience at a national and regional level of what has worked and what has gone on over the past 10 to 15 years and what has been developed. Good information, good facilities, confidence in terms of the safe environment that allows people to wait and allow people to access those. The design functions are something that everyone puts to. Who then leads on that? That will vary across Scotland undoubtedly. Funding has certainly come through local authority side of things when they have bid successfully into national funding. I am trying to think in terms of other than perhaps the bigger regional partnerships such as SPT, the availability of the level of capital funding for creating large-scale integrated hubs that serve within a city region is often reliant on funding coming from national government to actually make those happen. You can be talking £10 million, £15 million, £20 million for some of the bigger sites that you are bringing forward. In terms of that, that absolutely has to be a partnership approach for those types of things. When you then go into a more rural setting, across the 32 authorities, there are some authorities who have developed integrated hubs that interchange opportunities. They will tend to have smaller amounts of parking on a key corridor that allows people to access a mainline corridor service in terms of bus services. That will typically—again, when those have been brought forward, the ones that I have seen will have the ability to cycle and walk and will have good cycle parking. They are now starting—there are a couple of locations that I can think of that have EV charge points in as well, so that would be part of the design criteria. Other facilities, quite often, are local authorities who say, well, what else? If you have people gathering that location, what else would you have? Information boards for the local community are local waste collection points because that is an easy place to go to and from. As a local authority, what else does that community need? If we are going to use an area of land, we will try to put as many of those things in as possible. That is probably a more emerging area at the moment in terms of how you would see those start to pop up. I know that that is one of the areas that has been identified within national transport strategy. You will start to see those emerging at a strategic level across Scotland, in the back of revised regional transport strategies, and then you will post the elections. I am sure that that will start to then emerge as the types of things that lots of communities will look to develop. I tried to take a couple of notes in terms of how you went through the different points. I think that I might have covered most of the elements there. That is very helpful. Can I bring in Paul White on the role of local authorities in coordinating information for transport hubs from a bus perspective? What you think they should be doing? What they could do more? Paul? I think that they play a key role. Again, as maybe Eunice said, there is a partnership approach to be had there. We are big advocates of integrated transport hubs. The sector is strongly advocated for them if there is evidence to the NPF2 inquiry. Through the bus partnership fund, £500 million has been allocated to fund bus service improvements and speed-up buses to generally improve bus running times. Through that, you can form bus service improvement partnerships with local authority and bus operators to come together and look at a whole range of local service improvements. The idea is that, if you would be holistic and encourage active travel, you would include walking and cycling in your grander vision for the local authority. Within that, you might look for the operator to invest in new vehicles, but between you both you can look at how you deliver integrated travel, how you provide information. There is some good work already on going with Travelling Scotland, which will expand that valuable resource to include further information and fares levels and availability, where you can buy tickets. There is also good work in Glasgow, where operators are directly looking at tapping goals. You have a capped level of payment per day, the model that you have already in London. Those are things that are on going that you can really look to deliver in partnership. For us, the bus service improvement partnership is the best model where you can consider those things to provide that holistic approach. You can access bus, but there is also safe parking for bike. There are walking routes to get there. The local authority with its role can look to where those can be cited and have a strategic approach that delivers bus improvement alongside walking and cycling, so that you are really looking at those top tiers of the sustainable transport hierarchy and delivering for bus users, as well as cyclists, walkers and wheelers at the same time. Thank you, and can I bring in Steve if we can talk about the car perspective on that integrated transport hub question? Certainly. It is very important that I go a step further. I say that the local authority's role is not just about putting all the different aspects of transport onto the page at one time and thinking about them, but taking a step back from that, because, as we all know, transport is a derived demand. Really what local authorities job here is, it's about making sure that we can get access to employment and education and services, and indeed, to some extent, having those things come to us increasingly these days, as we've learnt through the severe challenges of the last couple of years of Covid. A lot of us have found that we can get things delivered to our homes and we can work from home. That's had an impact in the last couple of years on the commuter market and on our access to retail. Whether that's going to continue is something that really does need thinking about. Is that something that, for example, the Scottish Government and local authorities actively want to encourage the idea that people won't be going into their office jobs from nine to five, five days a week, but perhaps they're only going in one, two or three days? The reason I stress that is that not only is it important for bus services and for rail services, but it also goes to the question of whether you want people to be travelling or whether, by turn, as another body giving evidence to the committee has suggested, it would be better to spend rather more money on good signal connectivity so that it makes it easier for people to work from homes. That's something that's happened to quite a large extent in France. That plays to the question that you posed me, which is about the scope for park and ride and perhaps for car clubs. I think that if people are working in city centres, if they're trying to get city centres, there's often a good case for encouraging them out of their vehicle before they get into the built-up area. That's where park and ride can work really well. It can provide secure parking. It could, in the future, provide secure parking and a charging opportunity, so that's a win-win for people who are driving in. They can park their car, they can get it recharged, and they can get on a convenient and frequent bus service that gets them right into the centre of town, probably taking advantage of a whole host of bus priority measures that Paul will be telling us that we need to have. However, we really need to think about whether the volume, the flow, is enough to sustain the service, and that's where the partnership between the local authority and the bus companies comes in. If it were the case, and I can only postulate an if here, that office workers aren't going to be doing that nine to five days a week thing, the chances of that being an entirely commercial position are getting lower, because there just won't be the patchmig in every day of the week. Certainly, anecdotally, I've heard a great deal about how people are choosing to work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday rather than Monday and Friday, and you'd still need the service there in order for people to feel confident about it. Car clubs are probably more something for the central built and the more built-up areas because of the need for convenience. Nobody wants to have to walk a long distance from their house in order to get through a vehicle, a shared vehicle, if they're used to having a vehicle that's their own, that's at their own beck and call, they don't have to book it, they don't have to clean it when they're finished using it. If it's anything like the cars in our household with children, dogs and goodness knows what, it's full of mud and sweety wrappers by the time we're finished, and that's certainly not something you want to find in a shared car. There is some scope there, but I'd close on something I know the committee has been interested in, which is mobility as a service, where, again, I've been in touch with people, George Hazel, amongst others in Scotland, for quite a while on this, where I think the role of the local authority is actually central because there has to be a ringmaster pulling together the different service options for transport and making it easier for people to make a choice between them. Currently, we tend to have a system where the various modes are in competition with each other, so why not would they be telling us, well, actually, cheaper for you if you did this other thing over here, somebody needs to be doing that and providing information to us as consumers. Thank you very much, and I want to ask a second question, but I might just direct Ewan Wallace, unless the other two witnesses want to come in and they'll be guided by the convener in time. I want to discuss the current funding arrangements for active travel infrastructure. Public funds are channeled through Sustrans. Is that compatible with national and local climate ambitions? If not, what kind of funding arrangements should be in place? I suppose it's that kind of co-ordination of funding on active travel and what a local authority's perspective is on the role of Sustrans. I'll just direct that to Ewan Wallace, please. Thank you, Deputy convener. On the positive side of things, on how we've operated with Sustrans over the number of years across the 32 local authorities, we've seen significant amounts of funding routed via Sustrans. We established a very specific group to work through details with them on a pan-authority basis, because I think that it would be fair to say that early on, the complexities of bidding in and then monitoring the projects and the funding streams were too onus, I think, would be the view of local authorities. We've found that quite difficult to do, but I think that we've got to a much better place in terms of the funding that comes through with colleagues with Sustrans, the level of bidding, the way in which they're monitored, and the support that is given by the Sustrans core teams into local authorities is in a much better place. Undoubtedly, the preference at local authority level would be for the allocations to be routed into local authorities and to cause on ourselves, I think, to have been consistent in terms of seeking that. Of course, we have seen that as well, so that the numerous locations in which we can access funding in order to develop active travel projects as local authorities has increased substantially over the past five, six, seven years, so that the overall pot is very much bigger as well. That brings its own challenges, because that means that there could be one project that could be funded from three or four different sources, so that does then place a burden on the project, a programme manager, for within that individual local authority. I suppose that develops their skillset, but we try and get away from that as much as possible. The preference would be, yes, more directly into the local authority side of things, but I think that there's a healthy professional relationship right across the piece, because we know that the overall amount of money has gone up. It's about delivery, and it would be fair to say that delivery over the past two years has been really, really difficult. Therefore, that's meant that, in some cases, at the end of the financial year, there hasn't been the level of spend that was expected earlier on, but I think that, hopefully, I think that everybody realises the position that a lot of the local authorities were having to reallocate people into other activity over the last couple of years. However, we're all looking forward to getting back into a better place, I think that they have to convener in terms of how we actually take that forward. Our preference would undoubtedly be that it would come more directly, but, as it currently stands, I think that we're in a healthy place in terms of working positively with Sustrans, Living Streets, Cycling Scotland, all the parties that are involved in making our streets more attractive for walking and cycling. If that is a better way of doing it in terms of getting better value for money so that we're not bidding as often, so that we get longevity of funding, so that we can get two or three years worth of allocations at one time, that would be fantastic. A big positive that we've seen more recently is that there's a direct allocation into local government now for the maintenance of new and existing active travel infrastructure, so that's really welcome in terms of that going through the joint distribution group between Scottish Government and local government, and that's now starting to feed its way through, because that was often one of the big issues that we found was that we've put something nice and shiny anew, and in two years down, we've done that into a problem in terms of being able to maintain it and look after it. I certainly recognise that from a constituency case point of view, so it's a point well made. I'll pass back over to the convener. Thanks very much Fiona. Next up, Jackie Dembar to be followed by Mark Ruskell. Jackie, over to you please. Thank you convener and good morning panel, thank you very much for coming along today. My first question, all of you have probably touched on it slightly already, so if I could get a bit of a bigger dig down from you, that would be grand. To ask you what role you think local authorities should be playing in delivering the electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and not just for the public, but has already been touched on for commercial and public transport. I know in Aberdeen we're going down the hydrogen route it seems for buses, but I'd still like to hear what you think the role for the local authority would be in delivering those. If I can maybe go to Steve first and then Paul and then Ewan? Okay, I'm very happy to engage on that one. I think where it starts is there is definitely a role for the local authorities, as I said earlier on, in bringing local knowledge to bear on the appropriate locations for different types of charger, be they for the public, for open public use, or be they for commercial use. I think it's a question for the Scottish Government as to the extent to which it wishes to run national programmes directly out of the Scottish Government, the extent to which it wishes to use local authorities as delivery agents for those programmes, or the extent to which it wishes to provide some funding perhaps, but to delegate exactly how that money is spent to the local authorities. Each of those has its merits. I think there are issues that we've touched on before about consistency, about the rules that apply, about how easy it is to gain access to things. I think that the biggest conundrum that's faced in the UK nationally is about the extent to which the provision of chargers is, in the near term, ultimately going to be a commercial service, just like the provision of petrol and diesel is, or the extent to which, because the Government wishes to prime that market, encourage people, build confidence in people who might be going electric, that the charging infrastructure is going to be there, which necessarily means investing in advance of need and private sector, understandably, is a bit cherry of investing in advance of need if it doesn't think it's going to be giving a return in the relatively near future. That's where I would say not just local authorities, but that's where the public sector has an important role to play, whether that's, as I've said, central of the Scottish Government providing money and funding that through local authorities, I suspect that that is the right answer, because I suspect that what we need is that combination of funding and funding certainty over a number of years, and then local knowledge, which picks up where people are, the trips they're actually making, the trips vehicles they're actually making, and of course the trips that Government wishes to enable those vehicles to make, which takes us back to that question about park and ride and the like. Thank you. There's some points in there that I hadn't even actually thought of. Local authorities definitely have a role in delivering the infrastructure. I think one of the differences that's often cited between bus and train is that we don't own or have any role in the operating track that we use. Both a number of operators will have depots that have charging infrastructure in place, and it's their responsibility to operate and install. There will be a number that require access to energy outwith the depot. At the end of a route, or if you're a coach, coming in from another place, you can't always return to the depot. In those instances, it's probably very important that the operators and local authorities work together so that we can understand in terms of the network, the desired network of bus services from the local authority and the operator's point of view, where we might need access to charging infrastructure in the local authority and we'll be able to feed in to terms of what is logistically possible. Again, I was taking with Steve's phrase—I've written it down—in investment in the advance of needs, which is very important, because we need to have the ability to recharge a vehicle in place before we can really look to the operator to make any changes to the fleet in terms of replacing fossil fuel vehicles with hydrogen or electric vehicles, because you really need to be able to run those in the manner that you run your current fleet and have access to those charging opportunities. In short, it's a key role in working to develop where we need those charging infrastructure positions and what's possible in those terms. We'd be glad to know that I'm not going to disagree with my two colleagues in terms of the role of local authorities in this one. The planning and development and looking at where the best locations are are absolutely rude because of the different functional areas that all authorities would have. I think that one of what I'm seeing from a number of authorities, of course, is that they're looking at their own fleets and looking at what their requirement is for those, because there's a potential knock-on from that in terms of if you place EV charge points at different locations that can be utilised by vans and, for instance, used by a local authority. I think that this is one part of what certainly colleagues in Dundee did very successfully. You can then also develop the publicly accessible elements as well. Looking carefully at that, and the energy saving trust, I think, have worked with a number of authorities across Scotland to look at exactly that, to identify the gaps, look at what could be put in, so starting at that point. One of the key ones that's been touched on a couple of times is our own sites that are under our controls local authorities and that role at play, carparks being the obvious one. I think that I would reiterate the nervousness that we have around the role of the road itself, in terms of the road itself and the impact that that could have longer term, like significant concerns in terms of, you quite rightly were seeing the role out of the R100 programme, in terms of that super-fast broadband going in across Scotland and the utilisation of the road network. If we're then saying that we now want to then overlay on top of that significant amounts of infrastructure for putting in charge points at virtually every on-seat carpark space, I'm not—well, I think that we would see it say, as a society, that we would not be supportive of that as a position to take. I think that it needs to be a more planned, possibly a more regulated approach that would be required to make sure that we're not seeing significant amounts of impact on street level. Steve Goodie made a good point earlier about the role of private businesses in terms of charging opportunities at the workplace, for those that are still going there. Absolutely, I think that we're all seeing across Scotland already that supermarkets are putting in place rapid charge locations because they see the commercial opportunity that brings, because it takes people to that location. That's where local authority then has to say, well, in the same way should we support local business by making sure that we have similar types of facilities within town centres. So you're identifying those gaps and looking at it. I think that I got a couple of other quick points in terms of—already, I think that local authorities are working with the bus companies on where they see that they do need to recharge locations that are maybe more difficult for them to deliver, particularly at the end of interurban routes where journey times are such that they need to be able to recharge. The only other one that I suppose that I would blag was that, absolutely, it is the bit that's then emerging in the—you've made reference to the hydrogen economy, which is very prevalent in terms of the north-east. I think that we're seeing that in good examples in Fife as well, the police in Highland. For larger vehicles in terms of the supporting infrastructure to allow the use of hydrogen as an energy source, well, it's slightly behind where we are with the electric vehicle, but I think that that will also start to develop over the coming period as well. Yes, we will be key to all. I can try and reassure the members of the committee that that will be something that, as a society, we will try and ensure that we share as much knowledge as possible. It's very much front and central in terms of the activity that we're involved in at the moment. Thank you. As I'm still a serving councillor for Aberdeen City Council for another two days, I think it is. I know the good work that's actually gone in that local authority, but it's been good to get an overall look. My next question, I think, would just be, Stephen Ewing would probably be best to answer. It's regarding the on-street electric vehicle charging infrastructure. How do you think it can be delivered without creating the obstacles for folk with mobility issues or sight loss, for example? My own house, outside my own house, has an extremely large wide pavement, and there's no way right now that I could actually get an electric charge and point outside my own place, and I don't have a street column beside my house either, so moving forward, how do you guys see that being delivered? If I could go to Steve first and then Ewing, please. This is quite a challenge. As with so many of the things that we've been talking about this morning, let's not pretend otherwise, this is difficult. I think that the last thing any of us wants to see is electric cables trailing across the footway. We've got enough problems maintaining our footways for people, whether they have sight issues, mobility issues or whether they're just like me and not terribly fit, so let's not go there. I think it sounds like that in your case, the chances are you're not going to be able to plug in from your house if you haven't got off street parking that's really convenient if there's a car parked outside, but it's the other side of a wide footway, so chances are if you're going to go electric, you're going to be reliant on the public charging network, or perhaps a workplace parking option, but the public charging network. That's where the local authority role comes in, in thinking about the nature of the street where you live, the numbers of people there, the numbers of cars that those people might have, how often they might need to charge and whether you would find it not just more convenient, but whether in encouraging you to go down that path you would be happier if say some or several of the lampposts down that street were converted so they were providing overnight charging such that the cable doesn't go across the footway, it goes from the lamppost stand over to the vehicle. Another important local point there, not all lamppost stands are right at the edge of the footway, we need to recognise that too, but whether it be more convenient for you to be having a more rapid charge and recognising something that is key to the future world of electric vehicles, we've got in our mindset that there'll be a bit like petrol cars and we'll go and fill up once a week or once a fortnight. Chances are we won't, most of the trips that most of us make are really quite short, less than 10 miles, with a modern, one of the latest generation electric cars with a 200-mile range, it could be once a fortnight or longer between the points where the citizen needs to recharge the vehicle and they might find it the most convenient thing to do, to do that while they're doing something else. So I'll come back to, are we thinking about where people spend their time, maybe that 20 to 30 minutes isn't going to a new look rapid charging hub where they sit and read a book by a cup of coffee while the car is being recharged, for some of us that might be perfect, for other people it might be while they're at the supermarket, while they're at the gym, 30 minutes at the gym, come out and your car's fit to go for another two or three weeks time. So it's that sort of creative thinking that we're going to need and it's starting to come through now, it's not surprising it's taken a bit of time to come through, but I put that together with, for example, the creative thinking that we should have been doing right from the outset about making sure that this is an inclusive policy and doesn't result in people being disadvantaged. Last up, I talked about the convenience and the design of the chargers. They need to be convenient and designed to recognise that not everyone driving a vehicle has the ability to throw the door open, leap out and walk on their two fit legs to go and connect to the charger. In fact, I know many people who would find just manipulating a hefty charging cable quite a task. That's a design issue for the industry to come up with chargers that are intuitive and easy to use and easy to use for all of us. It's something I suspect that Paul could talk about in the way that we've gone about the design of buses over the years, where so many things have been done to make them more accessible to people who can't step up into the vehicle, who need handrails that are easy to see, easy to grip on to. We need that mindset to come through in the design of our chargers, too. Thank you. Ewan, do you like to add anything? A couple of things just in terms of when there's a society who's been looking at this particular issue. Undoubtedly, the prospect of cables across the freeway is one that authorities just wouldn't really be entertaining, but we have seen some design proposals involving essentially at the care blind with pop-up charge units. Again, that would involve running a duct back across the freeway towards a property. I would pose the question back again, are we really going to see the need, in the same way that Steve said, to provide a charge point or that at every single location where a vehicle would be parked? I'm trying to remember that there are certainly a couple of London butters who are trialling some of that technology. Interestingly, what they are very clear on is that, if another vehicle is already parked in that location, it will, in short, be tough, because it is a public road. There's no guarantee that you would get access into that point anyway. I would very much support what Steve said about that. We need to look at the locations before we go down the route of looking to put in lots and lots of locations on the freeway. We could undoubtedly address the issue in terms of those with mobility and site issues. You could develop something. In Scotland, our street lighting network is different from England in terms of how the electricity is actually metered, so we don't have the same opportunity to tap into the street lighting network. Also, for very good reasons, in terms of ensuring that the footway is as clear as possible, lots of authorities, as they have been renewing their street lighting stock, have tended to put the street lighting column at the back of the footway, so that it's not at the kerbside, for absolutely the correct policy position to make it clear for people to walk. I think that Steve said about range of anxiety and the ability of people to know that they've got 300 miles in their tank, whether it be petrol, diesel, electricity or hydrogen. I think that the terminology is grazing, so people will have the ability to go and pop up, top up every so often. 20 or 30 miles range added is something that's already been seen, it's something that colleagues in Dundee, the city of Dundee, have seen. I think that increasingly that's what will tend to happen. The vehicles themselves know where the charge points are, so they will tell the driver through the technology, so you will be made aware of, if you've got an issue, oh, I'm down to the last 20 miles, the vehicle will be able to identify locations. Some of them might be private, but they will also identify the public ones. Ultimately, I suppose that equity would be my final point, which is that we've never had equity in the current supply of fuel and diesel across large parts of Scotland and the UK. We all know that in terms of there will be different price regimes according to suppliers. I'm not sure that I'm seeking to have the fully equitable position in terms of the charge per unit of electricity that's available through different suppliers. You might pay less at a supermarket than you would, for example, at something that's run by one of the energy-large energy suppliers. Where we as local authorities have to look at is what's the acceptable rate to cover our costs if we are providing electricity in a public location in a public car park. I think that you, Maxine, are already doing that and sharing their knowledge of that to make sure that, essentially, it's not a subsidised—not directly subsidised—we cover our costs. Clearly, an authority could decide that they might want to subsidise. If it's a rural area and they feel that there's no other supplier and nobody else is willing to provide electricity for those that are quiet for their use on their vehicles, that might be a policy decision that a rural authority might take in the same way that it would potentially subsidise the provision of public transport. I think that that was all the points that I'd want to make. Thank you very much. I've got one more question if that's okay, convener. Very, very small, please. Very small. It's just to ask if there were any powers or a freedom to act that you think that the local authorities should have that would assist in delivering a net zero transport system? I suppose that's if I ruled the world kind of question, but just something very quick. You and I'll ask you, since you kind of like brightened up when I asked that question. Do you know if it was brightened up? Thank you. Yeah. In terms of what additional powers would we potentially require? I think that I can recall being asked this at a session at a previous committee. I think that part of the issue for us is that we have lots and lots of powers as local authorities. The thing that we possibly need is a lot more certainty around some of the probably the funding streams as much as anything. That's often the biggest challenge for us, for an authority to be able to say, you know what, if we're going to take this, for instance, we go back to the integrated travel hub question earlier on in the session, so those things can take some time to develop, but we don't always have the certainty around the funding streams. That's where, so plus partnership fund is good because it's actually over a longer period of time, but ultimately that didn't require, you know, that's established by government. In terms of, I think we have most of the powers we would currently require is just how we apply them in a more collaborative way and just sort of look at, you know, I think that's probably where it would be just pause in terms of that. So I think we've got virtually everything we would need. I would just refer back to the earlier point about in terms of the, once infrastructure starts to go into the public space, there might be some regulation that we might feel that would, it's not so much would benefit the roll out of towards net zero, but it would benefit, I think, ourselves as public bodies to make sure that we do land up with unintended consequences. Very much. And unless Paul and Scott's got anything to add, convener, I'll hand back to yourself. Okay, that's great, Jackie. Thank you very much. We are, we still have three members to come in with questions, so let's turn to Mark Ruskell next, who will be followed by Liam Kerr. Mark, over to you, please. Thanks so much, convener. I wanted to take us on to the topic of demand management. We could spend hours on this, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd just like some succinct responses to this question. Where do you see demand management sitting? We also got the Scottish Government's 20 per cent reduction target. We've got net zero as well to meet. Where do you see different demand management tools sitting at local authority level and how should they be deployed? Can we start with Paul? We'll move on to Ewan. Thanks, Mark. In answer to the previous question, I agreed with Ewan on his point around budget, the two things that I'd written down was budget and political will, and I think that this question probably comes under the second category of the latter of political will. I think that demand management is an important tool. I think that I gave evidence before on that 20 per cent reduction in car kilometres, and I mentioned that there would have to be sticks to go along with the carrots, essentially. You would need to look to manage demand and consider things like workplace parking levy, have a debate around congestion charging. I think that local authorities should have those tools in the toolkit for where they are required. They won't be required in all local authorities, but there should be options that should be considered. It's whether or not there's the political will there to have those difficult conversations. We saw some great progress in small demand management interventions in spaces for people where you have a look at road space reallocation and devote more to buss or active travel. There have been some negative headlines overall that have been hugely beneficial. I think that the need to introduce such things, if we are serious about net zero, probably overweath the short-term negative reaction that those demand management measures can bring. Back to the earlier one on the powers that we already have, there are low emission zones coming in, so that will act within the larger cities. There is an issue there in terms of choice, in terms of the decision making. That is what demand management is all about, in terms of making that choice clear. What is the impact of that choice that you are going to take in terms of the type of mode that you are going to utilise? We already have, as authorities, the ability to vary our own parking chargers. We are seeing now the opportunity for the use of workplace parking levees, so that is another tool that is available. I would support what Paul said. The 20 per cent reduction is ultimately a target that is going to be rolled out. It will focus the minds of local authorities on how we are going to comply with that and the range of activities that we are going to have to do. One of the biggest tools in our area in terms of demand management is very much about how we deal with the network in terms of streets. We have seen lots of examples in terms of the potential to reduce the impact around schools, for example. Edinburgh has done some really good work in terms of that. We are now back into the discussion about the role of your 20 man hour as a tool for influencing choice as to where and when you travel and how you travel. That is what essentially we would see demand management as. There is a big task, I think, for us to pull all those things together. That is absolutely a joint thing—the Scottish Government, the local authorities, the region of transport partnerships, the key transport bodies and how they actually make sure that all of those different elements are working together. I suppose that one of my asks would be to start to develop that in a collaborative way. Can that 20 per cent reduction target being met without some of the demand management measures? Is some form of use of demand management going to have to be essential? I think that within city areas in terms of that, that is where you go and you will be sales and cause their work very positively with Transport Scotland on this one. There are definitely places where you can achieve that. With softer measures than some of the harder, potentially less popular ones, the bigger challenges are going to be for those areas where there are fewer alternatives for making that switch. It might well be that the cadets will be more effective, so back to Paul's area of activity, the role of the bus industry and being able to get people to change their travel habits and utilise the bus networks. Okay, thanks. Steve? Specifically about the constraints on car use, I guess. There are two types, very broadly speaking. There will be the physical constraints, the reallocation of road space, but also to some extent the price you pay for parking, the things that are definitely within the ambit of the local authority, right through to, for example, a workplace parking levy, which would almost certainly be a local authority promotion thing, but with powers and undoubtedly with some help from the national Scottish government. Then there are the economic or fiscal measures, which would probably need to be something that was viewed as a national policy. On both of those fronts, I would say that there are two things that are really quite important and that are sometimes missed in the transport debate when we get hostile transport experts like me yattering away and talking very knowledgeably, it seems sometimes. We rather miss, again, that bigger picture of why would I, as a Scottish citizen living in a place that's going to have these measures, think that implementing them is going to be better for me? I know that sounds rather selfish, but if we don't paint a picture of why a traffic calmed area, why an area with 20-mile-an-hour speed limits, where an area where street space has been reallocated to provide more space for cycling and walking and public transport, why is that better? Then it shouldn't surprise us that when measures are brought forward, we get something of the sort of backlash that Paul mentioned earlier on, and that's okay. There's a case for saying, this is a tough political decision, but it's a decision we've taken. We're just going to bash ahead and people will get used to it. But wouldn't it be better if the argument was turned on its head that people were carried with us rather more? What we've seen with the implementation of some measures that's certainly unfamiliar with in England and around Greater London is, the more that the local community feels it's involved in deciding what the place people live in is going to be like and why they would like it to be different to the way it is now, the smoother things go, whereas measures that are implemented quickly, many were during the Covid lockdowns. Then there was a sudden backlash of people saying, hang on a sec, I didn't like this, I don't remember anyone asking my opinion. Even if it turns out that it's better for me, I draw the comparison with active travel. Active travel is undoubtedly better for all of us, but we don't necessarily all feel like doing it. We need to be presenting why this is better in the future. The second point is, if we're going to use financial measures, we have to recognise that although people are using cars by and large, are wealthier, then some of our households, nevertheless, low-income households are going to be the first that impacted. Quite often, those are households where people are doing low-income jobs, working what we used to think of as anti-social hours, and they're doing jobs that they have to go to. Those aren't people who can work from home. You can't have office cleaners working from home, it just doesn't work. We need to be thinking again, more broadly, if we're going to help those people, what's the complementary measure? If we're going to try to influence them not to use their own car or perhaps to car share or do something like that, what's the complementary measure that's going to help them financially over the hump, making the change? That's not necessarily a complementary transport measure. That might be something in the social security system or in some other grant-giving system that enables those people to make a change to their lifestyle. Thanks. That's a very useful answer from all our panellists. Can I go back to Paul? This is a question specifically about how councils could be and should be using the powers that are in the Transport Act, which was passed in last session of Parliament, to support bus use. Where do you see the next tranche of activity that councils should be engaged in? I'll go back to you and on that as well, but if we take Paul for us. Within the Transport Act, I don't know if you're referring to the powers around bus regulation or the powers around local emissions zones. Both within the Transport Act, we've seen progress in the local emissions zones to date. We've got them in four major cities that we do to be enforced in 2024. I'll concentrate on the other measures. I think that what we have in the short term, as has been mentioned previously, we have a £500 million bus partnership fund that can be delivered, where local authorities work with bus operators through bus service improvement partnerships to consider the means by which to improve matters for bus passengers. Part of that will be about reducing congestion, which is back to Steve's point about how to market the benefits of demand management. There's a virtuous circle that appears within the national transport strategy for bus demand, where if you introduce those kind of measures and reduce congestion, you therefore make it cheaper to operate services. Therefore, you can see improvements in service in terms of frequency, running speeds and fairs reductions. You get that positive look as people see that, and there are more people who are by bus and as information. You have that there that is in the short term the best quickest means by which to deliver improvements for bus passengers. The Transport Act allows for operate authorities to consider whether or not they wish to consider a franchising scheme or a municipal operation. Both are options on the table. I have referred to recent research done by Sistra for transport partnerships, which suggests that those are things that are considered. There are costs for both, and there are timescales involved. What we need to be careful about is that we don't jeopardise the short term where we can deliver real improvements in the short term through that partnership model in holding back for longer-term conversations, which we can have. I would suggest the need to make sure that we spend that £500 million well and quickly through the bus partnership funding and partnership model. Any brief points to add to that? Tens of users who are seven regional transport partnerships who are part of Scots tend to be the ones who would lead for us around bus provision. The best way to sum it up would be that we are currently considering all the options on what are the costs and benefits of the powers that are being made available to us all in the act. They are not insignificant in terms of the costs that would be involved in either going round a franchising or a municipal route. It is a long-established model that we have in Scotland and the UK in terms of the bus side of things. The partnership model has worked well in lots of locations, but I think that every acknowledge still gaps in different parts of Scotland. We see that emerging over the last three, four or five years. I think that we are probably in a position in which we are just not. Colleagues in that core are all over this one, and the RTPs are looking at it carefully. What are our options here? It is part of that. How does it fit in with demand management and changing the behaviours and giving greater choice in terms of the mode available? Thank you very much, convener. Thank you very much, Mark. Next up, we have Liam Kerr and then Natalie Donne. We will have the final questions. Liam, please. Thank you, convener. I will direct my question to Steve Gooding, because I am going on something that you raised earlier, Steve, but I appreciate you and Wallace might want to come in. Earlier on, you flagged up commercial vehicles. You talked about vans and taxis, and you talked about them as enabling a town to function. If we want to regenerate the high street, both generally and post-pandemic, logically deliveries and commercial traffic are going to increase, especially in things like lorries. Paul talked earlier about the business case for buses hinging upon the cost of the vehicle reducing. Presumably, freight traffic is in exactly the same boat. In your view, what can a local authority do to reduce freight and commercial transport emissions, whilst ensuring that there is not an equivalent negative impact on the high street that some argue that the carpark tax and a low emission zone would have? That is quite a tricky question. I think that we have just acknowledged that it is a tricky one, and there are not any easy answers to that. Let me start with the fact that we are increasingly seeing different forms of vehicles that can be used for last-mile deliveries. I am thinking here of things like electrically boosted tricycles, electrically powered, quite small delivery vehicles. It is not necessarily the case that large vehicles need to be used all the time for replenishing the shelves of our city centre stores or, indeed, of our hospitality industry—the restaurants, hotels and the like. Nevertheless, there does need to be a recognition that if we are going to have city centre hotels, somebody has got to do the laundry, somebody has got to make sure that the restaurant is stopped. Thinking about the times of day can be key. Thinking about where loading bays are provided for those commercial vehicles to stop is key. Thinking about whether there is any scope for working with the commercial sector—I know that the committee has had evidence from and had a hearing with people in the commercial sector—sometimes there are initiatives and retailers in a particular location have clubbed together to get a collective delivery of things that they need rather than, necessarily, each of them having a van parked outside at the same time of day, taking out road space and holding up the traffic. Lastly, it is the case that, although they have been slower to come forward because of the nature of battery design principally, we are now seeing alternative fuels coming through into the commercial sector. The bigger heavier vehicles, just as with buses, is harder and maybe hydrogen is going to be the answer for the biggest vehicles, but we have seen in the last year, I think, three, possibly four, of the big auto companies bringing vans to market that are electric or, at the very least, hybrid. I would say that, for local authorities in conversation with the Scottish Government, there is scope for thinking about clean air zones and the restrictions that apply to vehicles that are hybrid and capable of running on pure electric, so for zero tailpipe basis, whether they should continue to be allowed in and not have to pay the clean air zone charges. It is important when thinking about clean air zones, as I mentioned earlier, about consistency. It can be quite confusing if you are a company that is delivering to multiple locations to find that one clean air zone has one set of rules and another has another, and a bit more consistency might be the answer there. Also, it is likely that, for many vehicles, the hybrid route is going to be easier for them, perhaps less expensive in terms of buying the vehicle as well. Therefore, if the vehicle can run on pure electric, then setting a threshold that it should not be running on petrol within the confines of the city centre might be a better answer than simply saying, well, if that vehicle uses fossil fuels, then it is going to have to pay. Thank you. You and Wallace, I am going to come to you for my next question, but do you have anything to add to Steve Gooding's answer to my first question? The only thing that I would add is that we build on the need to have that conversation both with national agencies but also with essentially the freight operating companies in their individual city region areas that are impacted by low-emission zones that are coming through the system at the moment. You will get a good feel for—this is something that the regional transport partnerships and some local authorities would do—going to talk to those operators. What are their plans in terms of changing out the type of vehicles that they currently operate? Many local authorities operate on very large feats themselves, and I am already looking at the type of technology that Steve Gooding just referred to. Is it going to be hydrogen and is it going to deal? I have also seen those transit-sized vehicles operating off very efficiently in terms of electric and hydrogen already out there being trialled, so things could move quite quickly in terms of the available vehicle technology, but you will also get a feel for how the freight companies in your area operate, and you will look as a local authority or an additional partnership to assist them as best you can and join up those companies so that they can operate as efficiently as possible. I am very grateful. I will stick with you for a second question, if you do not mind. You said earlier that you are based in the north-east. We talk a great deal, rightly, about getting people out of cars and on to public transport and or into electric vehicles with the charging infrastructure that we have heard about throughout today. In your view, is that realistic in more rural areas of Aberdeenshire and similar local authority areas? If not, what are the rural solutions that local authorities need to be exploring? For example, might local authorities like to see new rail lines being invested in and or the dualling of key roads to ensure a less polluting kind of stop-start and ensuring that through traffic is not going through town centres and clogging town centres for buses, like Paul is rightly concerned about? Certainly, firstly, with my Scots hat on, there are good connections across all of the doodle authorities in terms of sharing our experiences. I think that what it goes back to is that something that potentially would allow towns within the borders to operate is often very similar to something that allows us to get better connectivity in transport terms for Aberdeenshire towns or for towns that are in Highland, for example. The core of that is that that is where local authorities have the ability to go and work with community groups, talk to community councils, get feedback from their ward councillors about what the key code issues are. Getting that modal shift is reliant on being able to fund the level of bus services, for example. I will put my day job back on. The use of demand-disponsive transport has been a very effective tool in the north-east of Scotland over a long period of time. It costs a little bit more, but it allows you to serve communities using bus services. That itself is developing across the UK now, where there is a more dynamic DRT services that are being looked at in the London area. We have one running in Aberdeenshire and we are looking carefully at how effective that is. That ability to utilise the bus network is still not as extensive as it probably needs to be in those areas. That is probably one of the big decisions for any local authority. We do rather invest in the revenue support for passenger transport that allows people to move about the area, whether that be for leisure activity, whether it be for business, whether it be for health and education. That is a decision point. Undoubtedly, the next element is the infrastructure that allows that to move more efficiently. It may well be that there could be locations outwith the central belt area of Scotland where some of the key routes will require investment. Those will be roads for the future, so they will be built probably from different materials. They will potentially have better telematics that allow information to be imparted. Those roads allow the electric vehicles, the hydrogen vehicles to utilise them. We already talked about earlier the ability to use interchange hubs. Your previous question is related to freight. It is joining all those different elements up so that you have often integrated transport as seen as the interchange in the bus network, but it is all types of trips and all modes. It is the integration that we would typically try to develop as local authorities and regional partnerships. All those different elements will need more than others, because there will be some sections of the overall network that are not at the standard that they need to be. They will therefore be part of a strategic approach, whether it be for the authority that I work for, or whether it be Highland, or whether it be Borders, or Grimthies and Galloway. The earth can draw us all those ones that have that ability where there are populations spread across large areas, and connectivity is as much as the mobility of people. That gives us a sense of—it is a really difficult question to answer in terms of just there is no one solution, and that is why the US MSPs will see a range of things coming forward at regional and local level that some people will support and others will not, but they are always done with that local dimension to them. I am very grateful. No further questions. Great. Thanks very much, Liam. Let me bring in Natalie Dawn for the final questions. Natalie, over to you, please. Thank you, convener, and thanks to the panel. We have spoken this morning about local authorities' role in the delivery of a net zero transport system and equally the consistency across the board. In relation to regional transport partnerships, what role does the panel feel that they can play in the delivery of net zero? Just following on from that, could I also ask if you feel that those roles might differ based on what model the RTP is, and whether any problems could arise from that based on different responsibilities or approaches or perhaps inconsistencies? If I could come to you and Wallace, please, for that question first. Okay, thank you very much. We are fortunate in terms of, as a society, for a long time now we have had all seven regional transport partnerships as part of our overall family, within that local government family. It is generally very, very positive in terms of how we work. I would absolutely see them being as key in terms of being able to look across boundaries, look at what the roles are of those different local authorities. I know that they will have challenges sometimes where there will be a different perspective in some of their partner authorities, particularly with colleagues at the SPT, where they have a far larger range of powers, a much larger range of activities that they deliver. They are essentially the passenger transport authority for that area, and therefore they have to have good relationships with their local authorities. That is quite different, but that means that they have the ability to put in place a whole range of activities. I am bringing forward lots of things. A lot of them we have talked about already this morning. Paul, in terms of CPT, are heavily involved in working with the likes of SPT. They then have other authorities that do have quite so many direct powers, but they give that strategic overview and the ability for the partnership board to garner views from all of their partner local authorities, and to have the share across the boundaries. They now, of course, have the powers to retain funds beyond a single year in terms of capital funding, so that was part of what went in in terms of the 2019 Transport Act. That allows them to retain funding, so therefore they can look at things that are genuinely longer-term and cross-boundary. I think that I have made the point already. That is in many ways probably at the core of some of the delivery things that we are going to have to do in relation to delivering on net zero. I do not necessarily see that the models are being constrained because they have been established since 2005, and those that are involved in working within those partnerships are well used to that. I do not see them as a constraint as such. There is an existing piece of work under the auspices of the national transport strategy, of course, to look at the overall roles and responsibilities within the Scottish Government and local government, both in relation to regional transport partnerships and local authorities. That is being looked at to see whether there are better ways of tackling some of the issues. With net zero, that is one of the key things that our group is looking at. I am not sure that you have anything that you want to add to that. Otherwise, I have no further questions. I do not know if my mic is on. Yes, it is. I have to declare an interest because I am a non-councillor board member for Sestrans in the south-east of Scotland. I am one because I see a lot of value in the regional level. I think that Julian was probably hit the nail on the head when he said that strategic overview level. In terms of bus services, they do not fit neatly within the local authority boundaries. You will have many that are longer distance. You will have one to cross over. There is an important role to have that strategic look at what is happening across a region and ensuring that the standards that are expected, be that emissions levels or the work that is going on to help to improve bus services for our passengers, are all working together to have that holistic approach so that an authority is not investing a lot of money in reducing congestion within their authority, but in the neighbouring authority the bus is being held up 20 minutes with something else. You can see a real benefit of the work that SPT does as a model 3 partnership in the classical bus partnership. I could go on that. I am a big advocate of the regional transport partnerships in the work later. Thanks, Paul. I will hand back to the convener now. Thank you very much, Natalie. We are running behind a schedule slightly, but I want to have one final question to Steve Gooding, because the concept of permitted development is being used in parts of England to assist the roll-out of charging points in supermarkets. Given that they need to think creatively and have people charging the cars while they are spending 20-30 minute shopping, that seems to me to be one of the ways forward. How is that working in terms of using permitted development to expedite the roll-out at supermarkets in England? In all honesty, convener, I am afraid that I do not know. I think that it is an important option, making it easier to enable the chargers to be fitted and having a conversation with the major supermarket chains to establish their enthusiasm or willingness to do that could be a key part of the future. If I may just very briefly on the issue of regional transport authorities, we have touched on the issue of skills, knowledge and understanding. One of the things that the English Electric Vehicle Energy Task Force has picked up is that regional bodies could be the best place to develop that expertise, rather than expecting every single local authority to be recruiting people who understand all about electric chargers, how they work and where they might go. There is a skills opportunity there as well. Great. As I said, that brings us to the end of our allocated time. Let me thank the panel once again for joining us this morning and for your very valuable insights. We covered a lot of ground and it is much appreciated. The committee will continue its scrutiny in relation to the local government inquiry in weeks to come, so thanks once again. Enjoy the rest of your day. The final agenda item this morning is consideration of a negative instrument. The traffic signs amendment Scotland regulations and general directions 2022. The instrument is laid under the negative procedure, which means that its provisions will come into force unless the Parliament agrees to a motion to annul them. No motions to annul have been laid. Do any members have any comments on the instrument? There are no comments. I therefore invite the committee to agree that it does not wish to make any further recommendations in relation to the instrument. Is that agreed? That is agreed. Thank you very much. I now close the public part of the meeting.