Quango in war on motorist ‘wastes’ £730k on PR firm

THE SNP’s transport quango has been accused of squandering taxpayers’ cash – after handing a lucrative PR contract to a private firm despite having its own in-house communications team.

Transport Scotland has paid £730,000 of public money to a media relations company to promote a crackdown on cars.

The deal was approved even though the quango already employs an internal team of communications and media advisers costing around £400,000 per year.

PR agency BIG Partnership was given the £730,000 for ‘communications activities’ to promote Low Emissions Zones (LEZs) which, from next year, will see more than a third of Scottish cars banned from the country’s biggest city centres.

The zones will be enforced by cameras which will trigger a fine for anyone driving an older vehicle in the city centre.

Scottish Conservative transport spokesman Graham Simpson said: ‘The sums being splurged by Transport Scotland on PR output are absolutely eye-watering. There are serious questions to answer why an outside contract has been signed to promote LEZs when the policy has been in the works for years.

‘While everyone wants to tackle climate change and improve air quality, there is a chance thousands of motorists could unwittingly be caught out by these zones.

‘Given the major concerns raised by the taxi trade in particular about the zones coming into force, this huge sum spent on getting a PR firm to put gloss on it would have been far better spent ensuring many cabbies do not go out of business in the near future.’

The AA’s spokesman Luke Bosdet said: ‘LEZs basically price poorer car owners off those roads. We have seen hundreds of thousands of people priced off the road in London. Lower-paid workers are among those who’ll be affected, including those who have to drive into city centres each day, and who’ll face a penalty for going to work.’

He said that he would ‘dread to see the same fate befall city drivers in Scotland’.

Figures released under freedom of information show £731,413 was paid by Transport Scotland for ‘communications activities conducted by BIG Partnership’ in relation to LEZs since 2019.

BIG partnership is described as

‘Dread to see same fate befall drivers in Scotland’

‘a creatively curious full service marketing agency delivering standalone and integrated PR, digital and design campaigns for clients across the UK’.

In 2020 alone, Transport Scotland employed six communications staff at a cost of £394,142. A spokesman for the quango said it has ‘the responsibility to undertake necessary communications work... to help people and businesses prepare for these [LEZ] changes’.

BIG Partnership made no comment on its earnings from Transport Scotland.