Transport to employment

Transport has a vital role in tackling child poverty.

When parents and carers cannot afford or access reliable transport, it can prevent them from taking up work, training or education, even when opportunities exist. This can reduce household income, increase living costs and can keep families trapped in poverty.

Our transport to employment work is focussing on tackling these barriers. When parents can access and sustain employment, household incomes increase and children benefit from greater financial stability. Transport improvements also enable access to childcare, education, training and key services, helping to create better outcomes for families and young people across the region.

Our work is focussing on six themes:

School communities – We will use existing connections with schools to work with parents on a range of initiatives, including bespoke travel advice and training, paid work experience placement in the transport sector, and engaging with parents around transport as a career option.

Transport to large workplaces – This will include larger scale projects to provide public transport connections to large employment sites across the region where public transport routes are either don’t exist or where connections are limited by timetables. Examples include new Sunday services to major retail employment sites and connections to the Edinburgh BioQuarter.

Rural Transport to Work and Further Education – We know that there can be specific challenges for people getting to employment and education opportunities when they live in rural areas and that this can be made more difficult if there isn’t regular timetabled public transport. Though this work, we will look to support additional rural public transport services in specific areas of the region.

Local Employability Partnerships (LEPs) support – We will provide additional funding to support LEPs when requested, such as to provide paid transport related work placements.

Transport to healthcare pilots – We will support a small number of high priority pilot projects that provide transport to health care locations. The purpose of these will be to demonstrate the value that specific interventions can have both for those working and attending appointments.

Capacity and capability – We will support some additional staff roles within local authorities to support delivery in the year, with a focus on engaging with employers around transport to support parents into work and with existing roles. This theme also covers our work on the whole Transport to Employment programme.