Process evaluation

This section of the assessment report reflects on the knowledge, expertise and workforce required to deliver the programme, RTPs’ work under the ‘Capacity and Capability’ theme, and lessons learned on planning and delivery, communications and engagement, and monitoring and evaluation.

Rapidly standing up a new funding and delivery model involving the national Transport Agency, seven Regional Transport Partnerships, and 32 Local Authorities, working in concert with many national, regional, and community-level third sector organisations to continue established and develop new projects and programmes was an operationally complex task. Evaluating the process of change on the basis of evidence gathered during such an intensive period of change was also a challenging task. In addition to impact evaluation, the RTPs' Year 1 Evaluation Reports, which Transport Scotland has followed up with ongoing in-depth discussion and supplementary qualitative research, also contain many valuable insights and recommendations concerning the structure and organisation of the programme itself, and these are reflected upon in this section.

P&P Theme: Capacity and Capability

What is the ‘Capacity and Capability’ theme?

This underpinning theme covers work focused on building the knowledge base and delivery capacity and capability of the sector itself (RTPs, LAs, the third sector and beyond). UK-level policy acknowledges that in the context of constrained finances and longer-term budget uncertainty, local authorities are finding it more difficult to recruit and retain skilled staff, including in specialist roles such as transport planning.

This theme is key as the long-term effectiveness of the programme is directly dependent on the existence of sufficient delivery capacity and capability. Transport forms part of Scotland’s Climate Emergency Skills Action Plan (CESAP), which highlighted that the transition to net zero will require behaviour change by both employers and individuals. The CESAP stresses the need for skills investment planning in this area and to support stakeholders to take action to drive behaviour change and develop the leadership and management skills that will be required for a net zero future. In the transport sector specifically, the Transport Planning Society published a think piece in May 2025 arguing for embedding behaviour change thinking into all transport planning education and qualifications, including the Transport Planning Professional (TPP) accreditation and master’s degrees, according strongly with the underpinning capabilities required for delivering the programme.

This Theory of Change hypothesised that investing in staff, strategies, and systems would enable long-term, locally led behaviour change. Although quantitative indicators were lacking, qualitative evidence confirms that foundational capacity has been built, aligning with the Theory of Change intended outcomes.” – SEStran evaluation report, assessment of their theme-specific theory of change.

Capacity and Capability – Selected numbers

Programme skills profile

What range of skills are required to deliver the People & Place programme? The following key areas of knowledge and expertise stand out from the evaluation and capacity and capability work:

• Transport planning
• Behavioural science
• Community engagement
• Knowledge sharing and evaluation
• Project design and delivery
• Programme management and monitoring

In policy terms, the programme sits at the intersection of transport planning and behavioural science, and requires a blend of expertise and experience from both professions to underpin its development.

Effective community engagement is the linchpin that puts people at the heart of the programme, with strong knowledge sharing and evaluation required to ‘close the loop’ and drive continuous improvement. Strong project design and delivery skills on the front line are essential for putting policy into practice.

As a multi-million pound programme working across regional and local levels through to hundreds of different projects in places right across the country, strong programme delivery, monitoring, governance, and financial management skills across the piece are also essential.

Programme workforce profile

Who delivered the People & Place programme in Year 1? The overall scale and makeup of the workforce directly involved in delivering the People & Place programme has been difficult to determine, being split across Transport Scotland, the RTPs, LAs, the private sector, the third sector, and the community and voluntary sector.

The number of FTE roles supported was not an explicitly ask in the M&E framework, and we should be conscious that any reported positions are only a fraction of the people involved, particularly when the number of dedicated volunteers who give their time to projects across the programme are also considered.

In future, a much fuller and more detailed picture of the programme workforce (paid and unpaid) is required. This will have benefits including supporting more comprehensive calculations of the programme’s impact, including through Social Return on Investment (SRI) estimates and Commercial Value for Money (CVfM) Additional Benefits Reporting (ABR).

In addition, understanding how many people deliver the programme, who they are and where they are, will allow for a better understanding of how to support the capacity and capability that underpins programme delivery, ensuring the workforce is properly recognised and equipped with the right knowledge and skills to work effectively. It is this recognition that stands behind the programme’s ‘capacity and capability’ theme.

2022 Capacity and Capability Assessment

In August 2022, a Capacity and Capability assessment was undertaken to inform the evaluation and evidence gathering phase of the Active Travel Transformation Project. A survey was issued across the sector and one-to-one sessions held with a cross-section of organisations.

Of the LAs (18) and RTPs (7) that responded, 12 stated that they had an Active Travel team. The average number of staff involved in active travel within the LAs that responded was 12.59 FTE. The largest team was based in Glasgow City Council at 109.9 FTE. Excluding Glasgow, the average resource across the other Councils that responded was 6.5 FTE. The average resource involved in active travel within Regional Transport Partnerships was 2.1 FTE. There was a total of 4.4 FTE staff working on active travel within the two National Park Authorities.

The average number of staff involved in active travel roles across the five national Delivery Partners at the time who responded to the survey (Sustrans, Cycling Scotland, Cycling UK, Energy Savings Trust, Living Streets) was 69.7 FTE. The largest team was based with Sustrans (256 FTE). The data returns showed that there were significantly more staff working in active travel based in the five national delivery partner organisations (363.65 FTE) than across the LAs, RTP’s, and National Park Authorities that responded combined (226.6 FTE).

A new Capacity and Capability assessment will be carried out in 2026-27 that will allow us to see how these numbers have changed as a result of People & Place.

Cross-RTP Results

RTPs took several different approaches to the ‘capacity and capability’ theme. Although envisaged as an ‘underpinning’ theme (i.e. one about the delivery system itself rather than target populations), personal ‘capacity and capability’ is of course a key aspect of behaviour change, and the individual / systemic distinction is not clear-cut when it comes to interventions such as providing volunteer training in walk leading or cycle repair, for example. In practice, several behaviour change interventions themselves were judged to fall most neatly into this category and so were sometimes reported under this theme.

Tactran

Tactran focused strongly on the impact in terms of personal capacity and capability (for example as highlighted, delivering 217 adult confidence building / cycle training sessions across the programme), but in addition to this, partnership capacity-building projects to highlight include Cycling Scotland working with the Safer Communities Team at Perth and Kinross Council to develop a multi-strand cycle training project, and the Bike Station working with Riverside Primary School on a range of activities.

HITRANS

Under this theme, HITRANS continued and expanded a cycle parking programme in collaboration with local authorities and other partner organisations, while shifting resources to enable them to expand capacity within the team to develop and offer an Access to Bikes fund. They created a second new post for Smart Travel Choices to enable co-ordinated messaging, communications, workplace travel planning and to manage a grant programme for employers to promote active travel to the workplace.

They worked with Orkney Islands Council and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar who part-funded HITRANS Behaviour Change Officer posts through their Local Authority Direct Award, in a set-up similar to Sustrans’ Embedded Officer scheme. They also supported a Behaviour Change Officer post created at the Cairngorms National Park Authority through the Cairngorms 2030 project. Some funding was used to support Highland Council to increase the network of counters to collect baseline and post-intervention data to monitor the impact of infrastructure projects and add to the database for active travel in the region.

ZetTrans

ZetTrans faced unique challenges around this theme, as a small single-authority RTP, and with limited geographical footprint from national active travel delivery partners in Shetland itself.

Responding to this in terms of delivery, for example, following an exploratory visit to Shetland by members of Scottish Cycling’s Rock Up & Ride team, their project was adapted towards developing local capacity by upskilling high school children (S3+) to become British Cycling coaches, establishing a school and community cycling club, and supplementing in-person physical delivery with remote learning activities, including providing schools with GoPro cameras to film activities and to encourage each other to keep cycling.

SEStran

SEStran categorised 10 of their 93 projects as falling under the ‘Capacity and Capability Building’ theme, accounting for around 6% of their total spend. Their evaluation report highlighted a number of positive changes in areas including support for strategic planning and behaviour change frameworks and improving staffing and organisational capacity.

Falkirk Council, for example, used People & Place funding to begin developing a dedicated behaviour change strategy, identifying key journeys, audiences, and a costed action plan for interventions. This strategy is expected to guide multi-year delivery of active travel initiatives, something that would have been unlikely without People & Place.

People & Place funding also supported the hiring of dedicated officers for active travel and behaviour change, as well as the purchase of monitoring equipment (e.g. counters). This has enabled councils and delivery partners to plan and deliver more structured, evidence based interventions.

On the way that delivery partner roles have adapted, SEStran noted changes around community empowerment and local delivery, with some organisations shifting from direct delivery to supporting local community groups to leading activities like cycle training. This decentralised approach increased reach and sustainability. One project lead noted:

We can support those who know their communities. They can have a bigger impact than we would as an individual organisation.

SPT

SPT categorised a total of 11 projects under this theme, typically focused on increasing staff capacity by employing Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) staff members to manage and deliver active travel programmes. The funding provided for 9.3 FTE roles, including staff to run an active travel hub in North Ayrshire, Workplace Engagement Officers, Cycling Officer Internships, and staff to establish a ‘National Park Mobility Partnership’ for Loch Lomond & the Trossachs National Park (LLTNP).

These were projects made possible through People & Place funding for additional staff resource, and all reported positive contributions to Active Travel Framework Outcome 1 (Increase the number of people choosing walking, cycling and wheeling) by increasing organisational capacity to deliver behaviour change activities, with individual project outcomes aligned with ATF Indicators 1 (Proportion of short everyday journeys by walking/wheeling and cycling ) and 2 (Attitudes towards/propensity to walking, cycling and wheeling).

SWestrans

As a single-authority RTP covering Dumfries and Galloway Council (DGC), SWestrans highlighted that from the inception of the programme they made the decision to recruit an additional member of staff to bring together management of the People & Place programme and Dumfries and Galloway Council’s Local Authority Direct Award (LADA), pooling these to provide a single fund. This entailed some changes to where funding was managed, allowing for SWestrans to work across the council as a whole to identify opportunities to embed active travel in wider programmes.

Nestrans

In addition to providing capacity and capability support across several projects, Nestrans’ report was very positive in terms of the capacity and capability benefits of the People & Place programme across the sector, with Nestrans Director Paul Finch providing the following reflection on the impact it has had on Nestrans as an organisation:

People & Place has strengthened our relationships with community planning partners, community groups, active travel delivery partners and NHS public health, because we now have something tangible to offer (either directly or through our delivery partners) over and above policy support and co-ordination - we have the ability to link things up better. Within the team there has been a considerable upskilling on grant funding processes and financial approvals. Behaviour change interventions at the community level are now a far greater part of our corporate thinking than prior to People & Place.

Paul Finch, Director

Planning and Delivery

Compressed timeline for establishing the programme

Each RTP and many delivery partners expressed that significant challenges in Year 1 arose from, or were exacerbated by, the timing of Transport Scotland’s decision-making around two fundamental milestones:

1. The point at which the 2024-25 delivery model was decided and RTPs were approached to take on and plan for the programme (three months before the start of the financial year);

1. The point at which the 2024-25 budget was confirmed and grant offer letters were issued to RTPs to fund the delivery of the programme (two weeks after the start of the financial year).

On the lead-in time for planning

Over the course of 2023, as part of the Active Travel Transformation Programme, Transport Scotland had been engaging with national delivery partners and other stakeholders on the future shape of national behaviour change and access to bikes programmes.

There was general consensus on the need for reform, and while ideas for a number of alternative approaches were discussed, it was the conclusion and announcement of the Verity House Agreement in June 2023, and the policy implications flowing from that agreement, that came to significantly influence thinking, broadening the horizon of possible delivery models under consideration.

While all parties could have benefitted from a longer lead-in time to prepare for the devolution of programme commissioning, there was both a need to keep step with the equivalent reforms to infrastructure funding, and a need not to lose the window of opportunity for what was judged to be a model with significant potential benefits.

Learning from this and looking ahead, notwithstanding any changes to overall policy goals, budgetary pressures, or the emergence of any critical failings, Transport Scotland shares the desire of RTPs and other stakeholders to allow time for the new model to ‘bed in’, and adopt an operational planning assumption that the People & Place programme will continue in this form over the next five-year parliamentary term. In this way, RTPs and delivery partners can be assured of no fundamental changes in expectations, and can confidently invest the necessary time, effort, and resource in building and improving the programme.

On the timing of funding for delivery

The period between the Scottish Parliament passing a Budget Bill for the financial year ahead (aimed for by the end of February) and the start of that financial year itself (the beginning of April) is the brief one-month window of time in which all internal government spending approval processes and financial operational delivery planning must take place. In practice this means that spending approval is rarely, if ever, secured in time to allow for sufficient, confident, delivery planning until sometime into the financial year in which that delivery should have commenced. This poses a perennial risk to partners delivering annually grant funded programmes, who are forced to operate in an environment of extreme uncertainty around securing the employment of staff, and pressure around compressed programme timelines.

We didn't get the grant offer letter until June and it took us two months to recruit and then we have to reapply for funding in December but we have nothing to show for our projects by December really” [as project could not commence until June. This is a particular issue for new projects, rather than long-standing projects].

Partner feedback from the SPT evaluation report.

The new People & Place programme delivery model exacerbates this risk by adding an additional decision making stage between central government and frontline delivery partners, with RTPs required to undertake their own spending approval processes, financial operational delivery planning, and onward grant making, in parallel and subsequent to the Scottish Government and Transport Scotland’s processes.

In the 1-1 interviews, projects […] highlighted the challenges following delays in receiving their grant award letters. Funded organisations described how delays, both from grant award or through the claims process, have the potential to delay project delivery, and create difficult situations, especially in cases where employment contracts were dependent on the grant funding.”

SEStran evaluation report.

Learning from this and looking ahead, there are two routes to addressing these risks: The first is to improve the efficiency of the internal Scottish Government, Transport Scotland, and subsequent RTP spending approval processes, and the second is to explore longer-term funding cycles.

In terms of securing internal government spending approval, notwithstanding the need to constantly asses and balance competing in-year spending pressures, as the People & Place programme is no longer a ‘new’ funding approach, and as the evidence-base from its monitoring and evaluation continues to build, Transport Scotland would expect the process of funding confirmation to become smoother and delays to reduce.

In terms of subsequent RTP spending approval, similar considerations apply in relation to securing agreement from RTP Boards. RTPs have also now built up a degree of additional experience and staff capacity to handle the administration of onward funding, and so Transport Scotland would expect these delays to reduce as well, for example:

From the RTP Active Travel Grant in 23/24 to the People & Place in 24/25 there was a 169.4% increase in funding which became the responsibility of Nestrans to administer. This increase in funding was accompanied by an increased administrative requirement. [..] Further work will be undertaken in 2025/26 to identify areas of improvement in how Nestrans administers the scheme from an administrative perspective and can support partners to understand and meet their requirements.”

Nestrans evaluation report.

In terms of longer-term (i.e. multi-year) funding cycles, the Scottish Government recognises that stakeholders need financial stability and surety, and is keen to provide as much certainty as possible while ensuring public finances remain on a sustainable footing.

That is why there has been activity to develop a multi-year Scottish Spending Review (SSR) which will be published alongside the 2026-27 Scottish Budget, to enable Scottish Ministers to consider the feasibility of multi-year funding to deliver on priorities in a fiscally sustainable way, while facing a challenging financial position over the medium-term. This involves the delivery of the actions set out in the Fiscal Sustainability Delivery Plan and the Public Service Reform Strategy. The ways in which these financial planning activities may impact the ways in which it is possible to support the People & Place programme is a subject of ongoing discussion and policy development.

“We are concerned that year-to-year funding does not reflect the timescales which are necessary for behaviour change to occur.”

“Annual funding creates barriers to delivery.”

Partner feedback from the SPT evaluation report.

Beyond refining spending approval processes and exploring multi-year funding structures, there are also opportunities to explore new or improved ways day-to-day procurement and grant making is done, which is a subject of ongoing discussion between RTPs and delivery partners:

If RTPs and local authorities could agree a delivery framework with delivery partners at the start of the year, much of the work could be awarded as a grant, rather than through multiple small procurement exercises. This would simplify commissioning, reduce administrative burden for all parties, and allow more time and resource to go into delivery.”

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent.

Resource versus Capital Funding

RTPs and delivery partners are united in the message that the funding balance between available resource (RDEL ~35%) and Capital (CDEL ~65%) sits at odds with the purpose of the programme:

[a] challenge has been the revenue versus capital split of the People & Place Programme, with two thirds of the available budget allocated as capital; this means that our ability to support revenue-based activities is constrained; for example, learn to ride sessions for children, adult cycle confidence, and workplace and community travel planning.

Hitrans evaluation report.

“Funded project types were somewhat constrained by revenue and capital allocation.”

SPT evaluation report.

“Several organisations mentioned that one aspect of the funding that they found less favourable was the split between revenue and capital funding”

Delivery partner feedback, SEStran evaluation report.

“Funding was capital heavy so this meant we didn’t have revenue to employ people to deliver the projects. So for instance, we could buy a cycling hub but there is no funding to staff this.” “I also find the revenue capital split confusing as Behaviour change projects are mostly revenue projects. Some of the projects we wanted to deliver have been halted because of this split”

Delivery partner feedback, SPT evaluation report.

While Transport Scotland realise this is challenging, decisions are made in the context of particularly challenging budget and resource spending reviews, which have required, and will continue to require, difficult decisions to be taken across government.

On the definition of resource and capital expenditure

In policy terms the 2004 ‘Smarter Choices - Changing The Way We Travel’ report marked an important milestone in approaches by governments in the UK to influencing travel habits through coordinated packages of ‘soft measures’ of behaviour change interventions. This report was the policy origin of Scotland’s ‘Smarter Choices Smarter Places’ programme that preceded People & Place. That report made the following observation about funding mechanisms:

Some local authorities have successfully made the case to their district auditors that soft measures, being part of a package of hard and soft measures, can be funded from capital budgets, and this has given them a great flexibility which they see as important. Others cannot do this, or think that they cannot. If soft measures are to be applied more intensively and extensively than at present, greater flexibility in funding them via capital programmes would be required, or alternative revenue sources would need to be found.

Cairns S, Sloman L, Newson C, Anable J, Kirkbride A & Goodwin P, ‘Smarter Choices – Changing the Way We Travel’ (2004), Chapter 14, pg. 368

Exactly the same issue persists more than 20 years later, and several complications in the delivery of certain People & Place projects in Year 1 arose through RTPs and Local Authorities making different judgements about what could or could not be funded from capital budgets. This issue is particularly acute when, as outlined in the preceding section, the programme’s overall available budget is so heavily weighted towards capital.

It is not in Transport Scotland’s gift to instruct RTPs and local authorities in the detail of how they interpret financial rules. However, Transport Scotland has made clear that at national programme level it will not object to local decisions to take flexible approaches around funding packages of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ measures. This is particularly true given that better coordination of infrastructure and behaviour change work is a key programme aim (see Joined-up Delivery below).

Transport Scotland has urged RTPs and local authorities to collectively discuss where they can take common approaches, and aims to facilitate further coordination through ongoing programme knowledge exchange activity.

Joined-up delivery

Despite the fast pace at which the programme was established and the subsequent delay to it beginning in earnest, even from the first ‘year’ (10 months or so in practice) there are several good examples of how the new model has better enabled joined-up delivery, with funding being put to valuable cross-portfolio uses across infrastructure, health, education, and other areas such as air quality, including unlocking matched resource funding or compounding the impact previously committed resource funding. One project supported in part by People & Place was the winner of the Scottish Public Service Awards 2025 ‘Campbell Christie Public Service Reform Award’ for citizen-centred preventative working across boundaries, (see the Case Study below). Other examples include:

HITRANS

Worked with Orkney Islands Council and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar who part-funded HITRANS Behaviour Change Officer posts through their Local Authority Direct Award, in a set-up similar to Sustrans’ Embedded Officer scheme. They also supported the Behaviour Change Officer post created at the Cairngorms National Park Authority through the Cairngorms 2030 project. Some funding was used to support Highland Council to increase the network of counters to collect baseline and post-intervention data to monitor the impact of infrastructure projects and add to the database for active travel in the region.

SEStran

Highlighted that supporting staff time and dedicated active travel and behaviour change officers enabled the development of active travel behaviour change plans and strategies for councils. As a result, they have been able to plan programmes of behavioural change interventions over multiple years, especially important as many local authorities have not previously had access to funding to deliver these projects. An element highlighted under ‘capacity and capability’ was improved cross-departmental and community engagement, with projects like accessibility audits in East Lothian leading to new conversations across council departments and with communities, influencing broader infrastructure planning. A council officer shared:

We’ve looked outside our traditional boundaries… It’s motivated good discussions inside and outside the council.

In support of infrastructure spending SPT awarded North Lanarkshire Council £132,000 to match fund budget from other sources, including the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, to install five Active Travel Hubs across the local authority. In support of education spending they awarded East Dunbartonshire Council £50,000 to purchase 156 cycles for primary and secondary schools requested to enable Bikeability and Sustrans I Bike Training and to integrate cycle maintenance, road safety, and environmental education into the curriculum. In support of health spending Cycling UK was awarded £137,368 to work with underserved individuals experiencing low levels of physical activities and poor health, supporting over 4,400 participants via 148 cycling activities and 300 Health Walks.

Nestrans

Reflected in general on how People & Place strengthened relationships with community planning partners, community groups, active travel delivery partners and NHS public health, because they now had something tangible to offer (either directly or through delivery partners) over and above policy support and co-ordination, namely the resource to link things up better.

ZetTrans

Highlighted how their Cycling UK Development Officer was able to signpost people to various health walks on offer (these being funded through Scottish Government’s Active Scotland directorate) and also identify gaps in provision leading to new health walks being established in partnership with the NHS.

Despite these positive indications from across the programme, some delivery partners report that the funding landscape still feels fragmented, suggesting there is more that could be done, not just at the Transport Scotland / People & Place level, but across government:

Better alignment with complementary national funding streams. There is significant potential to connect People & Place with funding for climate, energy, nature, adaptation and green skills. At present these opportunities can feel siloed, making it harder to create integrated programmes. Stronger national alignment would deliver better value for money and greater contribution to Programme for Government outcomes.”

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent

Communication and Engagement

Key lessons that emerged from Year 1 were around the large number of stakeholders involved in coordination and delivery across the programmes’ funded activities, and how critical early and ongoing collaborative engagement is to ensuring success. The tight timelines described in the Planning and Delivery section (previously in this chapter) meant that over the establishing phase of the programme, not everyone felt sighted or engaged at the right time, but these experiences are feeding into future improvement.

The size of the RTP and the resource available to them was the biggest factor determining how much work could be done, as illustrated below through examples from larger (SEStran), mid-sized (Nestrans), and smaller (ZetTrans) RTPs’ experiences:

SEStran

Rapidly developed a high-level programme plan in January and February 2024, and found early engagement with local authorities and delivery partners over this short development phase helped build trust, despite initial concerns about the shift in funding control. SEStrans’ evaluation report found their collaborative approach and knowledge and understanding of operational realities and constraints were positively received, and their trust-based relationships and regular communication and consistent engagement was highlighted as a model of good practice.

SEStran have been exemplary in their communications work around the programme, creating dedicated pages on their website, making project funding data openly available, creating case study video content, and setting up a newsletter, and running shared learning events.

Nestrans

Between preparation starting in January 2024 projects starting in April 2024, Nestrans met with local authorities and all six of the major national Delivery Partners to gauge what was already being delivered and what the aspirations were for future work. They drew up an assessment framework and developed investment criteria to assess and short-list proposals. This work involved a workshop with Nestrans Board members and working closely with Aberdeen City Council and Aberdeenshire Council in developing the proposed programme.

To consolidate this approach, Nestrans held a virtual People & Place event for delivery partners in October 2024 to showcase progress and offer a forum for them to meet. They also hosted a North East Showcase in March 2025, supported by Huntly Development Trust and attendees from across delivery partners, Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Councillors, and Transport Scotland. The event facilitated awareness of the programme and the wide range of projects being delivered across the region, while creating the opportunity for delivery partners to meet in an informal setting. This integrated approach to partnership engagement established a solid foundation for the 2025-26 programme.

ZetTrans

As covered in previous sections, ZetTrans had limited dedicated resources to deliver the programme, and as such, their communications and engagement work has come through their supported projects and delivery partners themselves. In follow-up discussion with Transport Scotland, they emphasise that with indications from Scottish Government that the People & Place programme is relatively secure for the longer term, then Shetland Island’s Council is more likely to support the creation of permanent posts to further support this work.

Monitoring and Evaluation

We are healthy and active

Transport Scotland’s active and sustainable travel work contributes right across Scotland’s National Performance Framework (NPF) Outcomes (currently under reform), but the key measurable indicator falls under ‘We are healthy and active’.

Through this outcome, the Scottish Government takes a whole system approach to promoting good health and physical activity, and it includes a ‘journeys by active travel’ National Indicator, which monitors the proportion of short journeys that are made by the two main active travel modes: walking and cycling.

We will have a sustainable, safe, and inclusive transport system, helping deliver a safer, healthier, fairer, and more prosperous Scotland

The National Transport Strategy sets out an ambitious vision for Scotland’s transport system for the next 20 years. The vision is underpinned by four priorities: Reduces Inequalities, Takes Climate Action, Helps Deliver Inclusive Economic Growth and Improves our Health and Wellbeing, each with associated outcomes. Three of these outcomes are worth highlighting as particularly supported through the People and Place programme:

Will be easy to use for all

People have different needs and capabilities. Our transport system will recognise these and work to ensure that everyone can use the system with as few barriers as possible.

Will enable greener, cleaner choices

Over the next 20 years, Scotland will see a continued transformation in transport where sustainable travel options are people’s first choice if they need to travel. We will design our transport system so that walking, cycling and public and shared transport take precedence ahead of private car use.

Will enable us to make healthy travel choices

Active modes will be a preferred method of travel and have a significant positive effect on individual health and wellbeing, both by making people more active and by improving air quality. This will reduce the social and economic impact of public health problems such as mental health, obesity, type-2 diabetes, and respiratory and cardio-vascular diseases.

Scotland’s communities are shaped around people, with walking or cycling the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys

Transport Scotland’s active travel work delivers against a breadth of strategic objectives, and these are captured in the Active Travel Framework to 2030, the overarching vision of which is that ‘Scotland’s communities are shaped around people, with walking or cycling the most popular choice for shorter everyday journeys’.

Connecting directly to the NPF indicator and the NTS Outcomes, the primary (but not only) outcome of the Active Travel Framework is to ‘Increase the number of people choosing walking, cycling and wheeling in Scotland’, and the primary (but not only) indicator of that outcome is the same NPF measure: ‘Proportion of short everyday journeys by walking and cycling’.

The agreed definition for this indicator is journeys under two miles for walking, and under five miles for cycling. This is measured at the national level by the Scottish Household Survey, with the results released annually in the Official Statistics publication ‘Transport and Travel in Scotland’ (TATIS). It is this primary indicator and this primary measure that underpins the People & Place programme’s ‘target behaviour’ of ‘The public choosing active travel over private car for short, everyday journeys’ outlined in Annex A - A ‘Behaviour Change’ approach.

A transport indicator ‘first among equals’

It is important to recognise the ‘journeys by active travel’ indicator as being the ‘first among equals’ of the People & Place programme’s outcomes, furnishing it with its coherent policy goal and actionable theory of change. As a national policy goal that Scotland’s transport agency has been made accountable for and entrusted to deliver against, the anchoring status of this transport-based indicator is appropriate in terms of transparency and governance.

A whole system approach

However, being merely one indicator ‘among equals’ is key, with the full range of Active Travel Framework indicators capturing a more complete set of transport factors. A failure to holistically plan and account for the programme’s full range of health, social, and environmental outcomes beyond transport would seriously curtail the breadth of cross-sectoral interventions and partnerships required to address the problem, and seriously underreport the return on investment that the programme delivers.

The feedback from RTPs and delivery partners on the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) framework established in Year 1 has strongly emphasised this, with all parties recognising the foundational role of transport, but wishing to build upon it, and warning of the pitfalls of narrow perspectives on the problem, its solutions, and their outcomes. Tactran, for example, are taking forward work to explore methods based on Social Return on Investment:

further analyses were also suggested by the Tactran board. […] An analysis based on the Social Return on Investment (SROI) is being developed to allow for a more detailed assessment at Tactran level. […] Fundamentally the SROI assessment will focus on the most important sources of value to be defined by stakeholders. This allowing the further step of capturing social, economic, and environmental as well as financial value.

Tactran evaluation report.

SEStran’s report also contains recommendations around collecting metrics on wider benefits and assessing value for money:

The Delivery Plan acknowledges the benefits to climate and public health but does not explicitly include wider impact indicators for health or carbon emissions within its core Monitoring & Evaluation framework. […] Recommendation: Consider piloting these indicators in a few projects before scaling region wide. Use a dashboard to track and visualise these metrics.” “Recommendation: Align approach to VfM to the Magenta Book, to go beyond current guidance from Transport Scotland and its People & Place M&E reporting requirements, to conduct a full VfM assessment.

SEStran evaluation report.

The M&E Framework in Year 1 (2024-25)

The devolution of the commissioning of all specific interventions to the regional and local level provided an opportunity for Transport Scotland to take a step back and develop a new national-level monitoring and evaluation framework that aimed to provide:

1. A picture of programme outcomes nationally (impact evaluation) and;
2. Insights that could inform continuous improvement of the programme nationally (process evaluation).

Prior to the People & Place programme, each delivery partner reported outcomes to Transport Scotland on its own terms, or within its own framework, and while this has definite advantages, as the active and sustainable travel budget increased, and with it the scale and breadth of interventions, it became more challenging to set out the overall picture and rationale for what was being achieved where, and how, and why, across all of the supported projects.

To help address this, in the short development window available to stand up the People & Place programme, Transport Scotland laid the foundation for a new monitoring and evaluation framework, working with evaluation leads from key third sector delivery partners and analytical leads within the agency.

The outcome of this work was a standardised set of pre and post intervention survey questions that would apply to all interventions and relate directly to the outcomes in the Active Travel Framework.

The results of standardised data collection with these surveys, organised along the programme ‘themes’, were to provide the core components of RTPs evaluation reports and this ‘Year 1 Assessment Report’ baseline picture of the new programme, allowing for meaningful comparison of projects across the country. A copy of the Year 1 M&E Framework is available on request from info@transport.gov.scot.

Challenges with the Year 1 M&E Framework

Year 1 was about testing and learning from this new delivery model, including the M&E approach, and feedback highlighted that while promising in theory, in practice, there are several challenges with the pre and post intervention survey method. This includes a lack of capacity and capability in the system (from organisations on the ground right up to Transport Scotland) implement it and analyse its outputs, and it has not provided the clear and comparable national picture initially hoped for.

Some of these challenges were connected to the system being new and established quickly, and so some improvements from Year 2 may be expected as capacity and capability has grown. Other challenges, however, are more fundamental, and point to the need to adopt an entirely different approach.

Capacity and Capability for M&E

Monitoring and evaluation activity under the new delivery model was widely seen as far too burdensome, with delivery partners working to two or more RTPs feeling particularly pressured:

Far more reporting of individual datasets to different funders has meant less time for us to provide useful synthesis within and across locations or explore meaning in the data, and more time spent on project administration.

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent

As well as delivery partners responsible for smaller projects:

“A key issue for us is ensuring that monitoring expectations are proportionate to the size, capacity, and role of the organisation within the wider programme. Third sector organisations operate with limited administrative resource, and disproportionate M&E requirements risk pulling capacity away from delivery.

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent

The emphasis on implementing one overarching evaluation methodology on all programme participants and then feeding this upwards created information bottlenecks at each stage:

we have noticed that different RTP are asking for different content and/or formats (data, information on projects, case studies etc) in their end of year reporting. TS may be receiving more streamlined reporting, but it appears this is due to significant effort across the RTP and delivery partners that could be made more efficient. Clarity on TS requirements and reporting intentions would potentially also help the RTP to focus more on outcomes.

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent

No ‘one size fits all’ evaluation methodology

More fundamentally, although Transport Scotland were aware that the pre and post intervention survey methodology would not be universally applicable, there was an underestimation of the extent of its unsuitability and how placing an emphasis on it as a core method could prove counterproductive. SPT’s experience described below exemplifies that of other RTPs in conducting their evaluations, and of Transport Scotland in trying to compile those evaluations into this Assessment Report:

The SPT People & Place Programme has funded an extremely diverse portfolio of 45 projects across 19 delivery partners over 2024/25. The relevance of the Transport Scotland M&E Framework across these projects has varied significantly, with some projects being suitable for this approach, and others being partly or completely unsuitable. As a result, the M&E data collected by partners has been variable, making a full comparative analysis across the portfolio impossible.

SPT evaluation report.

Feedback from delivery partners has also echoed this, for example:

“In the specifics, the framework survey is trying to combine very different datasets – a “good” outcome in a disability focused project will look very different compared to a workplace intervention e.g. what % of modal shift is reasonable to expect. It might make sense to group types of projects together by intended objective, and describe them as successful based on this.

Third Sector Delivery Partner Questionnaire respondent.

SEStran’s Evaluation Report contained a number of useful developments on Transport Scotland’s core M&E Framework, notably providing a fully fleshed out overarching theory of change, as well as individual theories of change related to each programme theme. The report also helpfully detailed a proposed list of metrics against the underpinning ‘Capacity and Capability’ theme, which was not specifically covered in the M&E Framework.

SPT’s Evaluation Report also contained a number of useful developments, notably a system of ‘project typologies’ to enable better comparison of ‘like with like’, grouping similar projects producing similar types and amounts of data, which allows for more meaningful comparisons:

1. Capital investment / material purchases,
2. Capacity and Capability / direct employment costs,
3. Ongoing Behaviour Change Interventions - Consistent target group,
4. Ongoing Behaviour Change Interventions - Changing audience,
5. Games or app-based behaviour change incentives,
6. Grant programmes,
7. Data and research.

These challenges of capacity, proportionality, and suitability, along with opportunities for improvement, are in the process of being addressed for future iterations of the programme.

The M&E Framework in Year 2 (2025-26)

The M&E Framework from Year 1 (2024-25) was adopted again in Year 2 (2025-26) with minimal changes, but it is worth noting that the scope of the programme was broadened even further to encompass ‘sustainable travel’ as a modal category and also grant funding for community-level projects as a mainstream function. This broadening of programme scope and function exacerbates all of the monitoring and evaluation challenges of capacity, proportionality, and suitability outlined in this assessment report, another factor pointing to a need to adopt an entirely different approach.

The M&E Framework from Year 3 (2026-27)

Having stood up a completely new funding model and devised an entirely new way of evaluating it over approximately three months, encountering difficulties like those outlined above is not surprising. However, Transport Scotland does have a vision for how to develop the M&E approach going forward, based on gathering a streamlined set of core metrics and supporting periodic longer-term evaluations. Based on the feedback from the RTPs and delivery partners summarised in this Assessment Report, Transport Scotland has begun drafting a simplified set of indicators for RTPs to report against for 2026-27 onwards. Looking ahead, the M&E methodology will be developed and rebalanced through:

• Placing more emphasis on inferring national programme outcomes rather than directly measuring individual project outcomes;
• Strengthening the monitoring of standard outputs, and correlating those with national level outcome indicators;
• Using less frequent but more tailored national evaluation to sample-test this;
• Achieving adaptability to evidence through strengthening peer-to-peer learning through knowledge exchange rather than top-down learning through national evaluation;
• Strengthen autonomy and flexibility by allowing RTP and delivery partners to choose when and how to evaluate their own projects and regional programmes.

Monitoring processes will be more carefully separated from evaluation processes, ensuring each is more proportionate and suited to its task.

Monitoring

Transport Scotland will implement a ‘rolling’ or ‘dashboard’ approach to the ongoing monitoring of the programme, capturing key metrics and outputs. Information will continue to be provided through monthly TS / RTP Governance Group meetings, and as part of the grant management process, standardised Quarterly Reports, evidence of expenditure against grant claims, and through an End of Grant report.

Triangulating (1) total project outputs collated from these sources, with (2) robust logic models and/or prior evidence, with (3) national-level data, will give Transport Scotland a practical ongoing picture of the programme underpinned by strong causal inference of effectiveness.

Evaluation

Transport Scotland will implement a longer-term evaluation approach - one better matched to the resource available for undertaking this kind of work, and better suited to measuring behaviour change over time. The agency will undertake or commission evaluation on a bi-annual basis (or longer if appropriate) employing mixed-methods sampling that will provide a deep-dive process and impact assessment.

Impact evaluation of a sample of selected projects will allow Transport Scotland to test the logic models and evidence base upon which the robustness of the monitoring approach depends. Ongoing monitoring will allow the agency to infer how effective the programme is, and periodic evaluation will allow the agency to verify this.

In parallel, RTPs, LAs, and delivery partners will be able (and indeed encouraged) to choose if and how to conduct or commission evaluation of individual projects for their own internal reporting and improvement purposes.

‘Programme’ to ‘Portfolio’

People & Place marks the shift in the Scottish Government's approach to promoting active and sustainable travel behaviour change from centrally commissioning a series of programmes to managing a portfolio of investment. ‘People & Place’ is not strictly speaking a ‘programme’, which the Government Functional Standard for Project Delivery describes as:

a unique, temporary, flexible organisation created to co-ordinate, direct and oversee the implementation of a set of projects and other related work to deliver outcomes and benefits related to a set of strategic objectives.

It now more fully bears the characteristics of a ‘portfolio’, specifically a portfolio of programmes and projects in turn delivered by local government, where these characteristics are:

• Has an ongoing existence for as long as the organisation has projects and programmes;
• Has constituent initiatives that will change over time;
• The primary focus is on the contribution of these products, outcomes and benefits to strategic objectives at a collective level;
• Is normally described as having a permanent lifespan.

2024-25 was the initial year of Transport Scotland maturing it’s delivery system, through a period of rapid growth, from ‘programme’ to ‘portfolio’, and it will take time to fully adopt the different mindset and techniques required for portfolio management, including a more strategic approach to monitoring and evaluation.

Additional supporting work

Transport Scotland is currently undertaking a range of additional supporting work towards meeting Audit Scotland’s January 2025 recommendation that “By the end of 2025, [the Scottish Government should] review the first full year of the new system for active travel delivery, identify challenges and address them. It should evaluate the impact of the changes and whether they have resulted in more efficient delivery.". This includes:

• Research conducted by Transport Scotland Research team with RTP’s members of staff involved in the administration of People & Place programme. This aims to explore experiences of administrating the programme and staff views on impact on relationships and collaboration across the sector (see Annex B – Research Report: RTP Qualitative Interviews).
• Working with the ClimateXChange (CXC) through a Post Doctoral Research Opportunity (PDRO) to produce a report mapping the evidence-base that can be used to develop a pragmatic but robust evaluation methodology to assess modal shift to active travel as a result of the People & Place programme.
• Conducting a refresh of the Active Travel Framework Indicators, which are the specific metrics used to track progress toward the framework’s outcomes.
• Reviewing programme data collection across Transport Scotland funded active travel programmes to ensure value for money and help identify any gaps in coverage.
• Procuring consultancy support for sustainable transport projects to enable adequate access to expertise and resources to ensure continuity in project level monitoring and evaluation.

A note on learning lessons from across government

In assessing Year 1 of the People & Place Programme and in particular the challenges involved in evaluation and how to overcome these, it is instructive to have reference to the Scottish Government’s September 2025 paper presenting learning from the evaluation of the child poverty pathfinders in Dundee and Glasgow about evaluating evolving and complex programmes. This paper is intended to support policy makers, programme delivery teams and evaluators to get the best out of future evaluations of similar initiatives and has a set of detailed suggestions for future evaluation of complex, place-based initiatives.