Scotland’s Road Safety Framework Fund Backs Work Drivers

£865,297 from Transport Scotland’s Road Safety Framework Fund is going to 11 projects this year, and the biggest cheques are for people who drive for work, gig riders and diabetes training. The money is meant to cut deaths and serious injuries under Scotland’s Road Safety Framework to 2030. It cannot pay for a new junction, a barrier or a crossing.

Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport Stephen Flynn said the round was about behaviour, risk and daily pressure on the network, not tarmac. The fund’s published rules already force that choice. Infrastructure bids are rejected on sight.

Eleven Projects Share £865,297

The 11 awards sit inside the recommended band of £25,000 to £150,000. The Scottish Occupational Road Safety Alliance, run with the safety charity RoSPA, takes the ceiling. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is just under it, for virtual-reality sessions with young people. A dance and film company, Marc Brew Company, takes one of the smaller sums for workshops and digital content.

THE 11 AWARDS

Work driving takes £260,666 across three projects. Diabetes takes £107,920 in two grants to the same charity. Youth education, VR, film and telematics take £412,253. Living Streets, the walking charity, takes £84,458 for street-design research, the only award that even studies the kerb line, and it still does not pour concrete.

Last year’s call was thinner. Transport Scotland’s 2024/25 delivery note says seven applications came in and five were funded. This list is more than twice as long, and it leans harder into workplaces and health.

The Largest Award Goes to People Who Drive for Work

ScORSA’s £150,000 is the national programme for people who drive or ride to earn a living. RoSPA’s separate gig-economy project adds £56,946. Ayrshire Roads Alliance and Cycling Scotland add £53,720 for an online course aimed at staff who drive for their employer and at the people those staff can hit.

The Scottish Occupational Road Safety Alliance puts the scale in blunt terms. Up to a third of road crashes involve someone who is driving for work, and more employees die in work-related road crashes than in all other workplace accidents combined. Transport Scotland’s own in-depth study of fatal collisions from 2015 to 2020 found 21% of the drivers were on a journey as part of work, with another 9% commuting.

Gig work sits in a worse statistical hole. A ScORSA scoping review by Dr Karen Gregory of the University of Edinburgh and Boyan Karabaliev of the Workers Observatory says UK collision records treat gig workers as ordinary road users, not as people at work. Employment status and the platform rarely appear in the file, so the harm never shows up as a workplace problem. Piece-rate pay, unpaid waiting time, live tracking and penalties for lateness push speeding, red-light running, skipped breaks and phone use in motion. The review calls those choices rational responses to the job, not private vice.

A Fair Work review of Scottish gig couriers, published via the University of Strathclyde, put numbers on that pressure. Among participants, 83% said they had crossed red lights and 78% said they had driven over pavements. ScORSA and RoSPA want collision reports to flag platform work, minimum training and kit, and some accountability from the apps that set the pace. The new grants pay for that argument to be turned into a 12-month programme, not for a loading bay.

Improving road safety is about more than infrastructure alone. It’s about understanding the behaviours, risks and challenges people face every day on our roads, and finding effective ways to address them.

Stephen Flynn, Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Tourism and Transport

The public row about Scottish road death still clusters on young car drivers and on motorcyclists, who accounted for 34 of the 134 fatalities in 2025. Delivery riders and grey-fleet vans barely feature in that argument. This funding round is one of the few official places they do.

Diabetes Draws Two Grants and Almost No Crash Tag

The Diabetes Safety Organisation is the only body on the list with two awards. £45,082 is for getting diabetes into road safety programmes and guidance. £62,838 is for training local authority staff across Scotland. Together that is more money than Scottish Borders Council receives for young drivers and motorcyclists.

DSO, working with the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety and National Highways’ Driving for Better Business programme, published Hiding in Plain Sight in 2025. The report says people who drive for a living are twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes as the wider public. Kate Walker, DSO’s chief executive, said diabetes is hiding in plain sight in the transport industry and the risks are far-reaching.

WHAT THE DIABETES REPORT FLAGS

• Driver prevalence: About 1 in 6 commercial drivers are estimated to have diabetes, rising to 1 in 3 among drivers aged 55 to 64.
• The wider payroll: A Road Haulage Association survey put the share of road transport staff with diabetes as high as 2 in 5.
• Hypos at work: 58% of drivers surveyed reported a non-severe hypo at work and 17% reported a severe one, including loss of consciousness.
• Licensing gaps: Up to 40% of insulin-treated drivers had not declared the condition to the DVLA.

Low blood sugar can wipe out concentration and, in a severe episode, the driver. Neuropathy in the feet dulls pedal feel. That is not a separate box on a STATS19 collision form, so the official 2025 casualty release can tell you that 3,092 casualties were car users and cannot tell you how many of those drivers had diabetes. The two DSO grants are an attempt to put that risk into council training rooms before it shows up in the death tables.

PACTS sits on both sides of this round. It co-authored the diabetes report and it also takes £85,000 to test whether insurance and telematics can pull young motorists toward safer driving. The same advisory body is being paid to look at a medical risk in the cab and at a black box in a new driver’s car.

What Young Drivers Get Instead of a Graduated Licence

Five of the 11 projects aim at young people. The Fire and Rescue Service takes £139,901 to put them in immersive VR and train hazard perception. Marc Brew Company takes £47,536 for workshops, film-making and digital content on what unsafe road use does. Perth and Kinross Council and Walk Wheel Cycle Trust take £64,480 for school travel, skills training and pupil-led work. Scottish Borders Council takes £75,336 for young drivers and motorcyclists. PACTS takes the telematics brief.

Holyrood has already said the other lever it wants, a graduated driving licence with night and passenger limits for new drivers, sits with Westminster. In May 2026 Scottish ministers asked the UK government for those powers and were told London would not impose blanket restrictions on new drivers. The Framework Fund cannot write that law. It can pay for a headset, a film workshop, a school travel scheme and an insurance experiment.

Those tools have a record, and it is mixed. Road Safety Scotland’s 2018 country-roads VR film, a different project from this year’s fire service bid, posted strong recall among men aged 22 to 29. Intent to slow down is easier to measure than a death that does not happen. Each new project must run for 12 months and bring in an outside evaluator, which at least forces a score on the page before anyone talks about rolling it out.

Motorcyclists remain the raw nerve. They made up 581 casualties in 2025, and rider deaths held at 34, the same as 2024, while car deaths fell from 73 to 59. Borders Council is the only award that names motorcyclists in its brief. The rest of the youth money is aimed at people who have not yet built those habits, or who have just passed a test.

Why This Fund Cannot Pay for a Junction

Transport Scotland’s fund page is unambiguous. The Road Safety Framework Fund is a resource-only fund that excludes infrastructure. A bid that is everyday organisational work, that advertises a product, that is party political, or that is already match-funded by another Transport Scotland or Scottish Government stream is also out. Successful projects last 12 months, file progress reports, and draw cash quarterly against actual spend.

The round that produced this list was advertised at £750,000 when then transport secretary Fiona Hyslop opened it, with a closing date of 4 May 2026. The 11 published awards sum to £865,297. Officials assess bids first, the Operational Partnership Group then scores them against the 2030 framework, and the Strategic Partnership Board signs them off.

WHAT THE FUND WILL NOT BUY

• Tarmac and kit: Junctions, barriers, crossings, signs and any other infrastructure are excluded.
• Day job costs: Work that a council or charity would do anyway does not qualify.
• Double dipping: A project already match-funded by another Transport Scotland or Scottish Government stream is rejected.
• Sales and politics: Bids that promote a product for gain, or that are party political, are barred.

The physical work lives in other budgets. Transport Scotland put a record £48 million into road safety in 2025/26, a 33% rise on the year before, after annual spend had already climbed from £16 million in 2019-20 to £36 million in 2024-25. Inside that 2025/26 envelope, the Road Safety Improvement Fund was set at £14.25 million for local authority schemes such as bend treatments, motorcycle-friendly barriers, solar road studs and crossings. Those pots pour concrete. This one pays for trainers, headsets, film shoots, research interviews and telematics trials.

HOW THIS ROUND RAN

1. March 2026: Transport Scotland opens the call as a £750,000 resource-only fund, with Hyslop inviting bids from public bodies, charities, universities and professional groups.
2. 4 May 2026: The window closes at midnight. Bids need a 12-month plan, partnership evidence and an independent evaluator.
3. September 2026: Flynn announces 11 awards totalling £865,297, weighted toward work driving, diabetes and young road users.

Flynn’s line that safety is about more than infrastructure is the fund’s legal position, restated as a political one. The question the awards leave open is whether behaviour projects of this size can move a death total that is still 47 above the 2030 line.

134 Deaths Against a Target of 87

Provisional figures from Transport Scotland say 134 people were killed on Scotland’s roads in 2025, down from 160 in 2024. That is the third-lowest annual total since records began, and the lowest outside the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. Serious injuries fell 4% to 1,906. Slight injuries fell 3% to 3,495. All casualties fell 3% to 5,535. Final figures are due in October 2026 and can still move.

2030 TARGETS VERSUS 2025

The killed target is a 50% cut from a 2014 to 2018 average of 174, which means 87 deaths a year by 2030. At 134, 2025 is 47 above that line. Transport Scotland has already said the 2025 fatality count is not on track. Child deaths are closer to their 60% goal. Adult deaths are not.

Mode splits explain why the grant list looks the way it does, and where it still has holes. Car users were 3,092 of the 2025 casualties, with car deaths down 19% from 73 to 59. Pedestrian casualties were 867, with pedestrian deaths down 15 to 27. Cyclist deaths rose from 3 to 7. Motorcycle deaths did not fall. Work status and medical status do not appear in those rows. The Framework Fund is paying three projects to treat the road as a workplace and two to treat diabetes as a driving risk, because the main statistical machine still does not.

Each of the 11 projects has a year to produce an evaluation. The 2030 target of 87 deaths is four years beyond that. If the gig, diabetes and headset work only improves training slides, the death table will not notice. If it changes how platforms, fleets and new drivers behave, this will have been the cheap round that the £14.25 million capital pot could not buy.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Road Safety Framework Fund?

It is Transport Scotland’s annual resource grant for 12-month road safety projects that help deliver the 2030 framework, paid quarterly against progress reports and actual spend, and it must be independently evaluated by an external company before anyone can argue it should run again.

Can the fund pay for new road infrastructure?

No. The published criteria say infrastructure projects will not be considered, and bids that duplicate everyday duties or that are already match-funded by another Transport Scotland or Scottish Government stream are also rejected.

Who can apply for the fund?

Public bodies, professional associations, registered charities and university departments in Scotland can apply, and private firms, community interest companies and not-for-profit businesses are considered only if the work is charitable, for public benefit, and meets the fund rules.

How much can a single project request?

There is no formal minimum, but Transport Scotland recommends bids of around £25,000 to £150,000, which is the band every award in this round sits inside, with ScORSA taking the recommended ceiling.

What are Scotland’s 2030 road casualty targets?

Against a 2014 to 2018 baseline the framework wants a 50% cut in people killed (to 87 a year) and in people seriously injured, and a 60% cut in children killed and children seriously injured, with a longer Vision Zero aim of no one killed or seriously injured on the roads by 2050.