Crispin Hayes, Whole Cycle Ltd, lead consultant to the Killearn Active Travel projects gives us his reaction to the changes in funding by Transport Scotland that will affect this and other active path community projects
In February this year, Transport Scotland announced a decision to wind up the Sustrans Places for Everyone funding programme over the next year and a half, finally closing in September 2025, and not providing any new construction funding from now.
Transport Scotland’s replacement is a new construction fund that will be distributed direct to Local Authorities only and not community organisations. I think that is a pity because community organisations have a much greater focus on working for their local community. My concern is that communities will lose control of their project, because essentially they do the design stages, and then hand it over to the Council to do the construction.
It also risks projects like the Killearn active travel projects not being near the top of the Council’s large pool of projects. And it is subject to other political and budget factors outside the community’s control.
Our current approach is to liaise closely with Council officers to ensure they are stakeholders in these design stages, and that local support means the project has to be considered seriously for construction.
As we said previously, Killearn-Oakwood travel path and Killearn to Balfron path projects applied in May 2024 to our funder Sustrans Places for Everyone to move to Stages 3 & 4 Developed Design. We expect to hear about the result of that funding application in late June or July, and we will update when we do know. We understand that it will be a competitive round, so fingers crossed.
Killearn Active Travel 