Councillor slams 'minuscule' amount of money set aside to improve Glasgow bus lanes

The amount of money set aside for bus lane improvement funding in Glasgow by the Scottish Government has been described as “minuscule” by a local councillor.

Labour councillor Jill Brown believes that Glasgow City Council should have been awarded more money after the city administration committee was asked to accept more than £3m to improve bus lanes, road infrastructure and safety across the city.

During Thursday’s meeting councillors noted that the £88,000 of bus infrastructure “tier one funding” has already been accepted by the council which will be primarily used for bus stop accessibility improvement work.

A further £1.3m of “bus infrastructure tier two funding” which has been made available to voluntary bus partnerships was also accepted as was £1.4m of external funding from Transport Scotland for projects that align to Scotland’s Road Safety Framework for 2030.

During the meeting councillor Jill Brown said that more money should have been allocated to Glasgow through the Barnett Consequentials, which according to the government website ensures that a share of additional funding only allocated to England, is provided fairly to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Councillor Brown said: “Obviously some money is better than no money, I suppose.

“As I understand it, the UK Government announced £15bn for public transport for English City Regions, which with the Barnett Consequentials would have led to £1.3bn coming to Scotland.

“Get Glasgow Moving says this would have been £531m to the SPT region (Strathclyde Partnership for Transport).

“The amount of money that the Scottish Government is then suggesting here is a minuscule amount of that amount of money that should have flown through the Barnett Consequentials.

“It would have paid for, for example, five years of franchising of buses.

“Do you have any background as to why the Scottish Government has chosen not to flow that money through and can you tell us what representations have been made, in order to, in some way to change the numbers here so that we are getting something more than what is being provided at the moment.”

Councillor Angus Millar, City Convener for Climate, Transport and City Centre Recovery, told members that it was not clear that the Scottish Government received the Barnett Consequentials and he would speak to Transport Scotland about the situation.

Councillor Millar said: “Certainly in terms of how the UK Government in the past has allocated funding packages to English City Regions in terms of supporting the development of bus franchising, there hasn’t necessarily been that kind of flow through in terms of Barnett Consequentials to the Scottish Government.

“I would need to speak to Transport Scotland offline. I don’t think that just because there has been an announcement in terms of transport funding for English regions, that the Scottish Government is necessarily that money.

“That is something that we have made representations to the UK Government on in the past as part of discussions around city region empowerment.

“We are keen to see transport in Glasgow City Region and in the city and wider region.”