Environmental campaigners have criticised national and local politicians for spending millions of taxpayer’s cash generated by City Region Deals on roads.

In a new report, Dirty Deals, Transform Scotland found that around £920m, just over 70% of all money being spent on transport by the country's six deals was on "high carbon" projects. 

They described this as “a vast misallocation” of public cash and warned it risked “embedding high carbon transport for years to come.”

The group are demanding a Parliamentary inquiry and an immediate halt to new road schemes.

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City Region Deals are packages of funding agreed between the Scottish and UK governments to bring about “long-term strategic approaches to improving regional economies.”

At their core, the agreements are supposed to “support economic growth, create jobs or invest in local projects.”

In their report, Transform analysed the deals in Scotland, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Stirling, and the Tay Cities - Dundee and Perth.

Collectively, the deals for the six cities incorporate £4.6bn of spending, including £1.3bn allocated to transport infrastructure.

The report lists high carbon projects including the £151m Cross Tay Link Road near Perth and a new £107m roundabout at Sheriffhall, Edinburgh.

It also points to work on the A9 and A96 and a £25m new road access to Aberdeen South Harbour and a £10m Dundee Airport investment.

Transform say just one of the City Region Deals commits all of its spending to low carbon transport while another two commit all transport spending to unsustainable high carbon projects.

The group has also criticised the “opaque” way thattrhe deals are currently managed. They said that many key spending figures were “difficult to obtain and in some cases not available at all.“

“It is unacceptable that for projects which are spending millions of pounds of public money, no data on the overall projected spend is available, and the lack of clarity prevents public scrutiny by elected members,” the report added.

Transform Scotland director Colin Howden said: "The City Deals provided an opportunity for transformational investment in transport in our cities, but local and national politicians have instead blown the cash on a new round of road-building that will inevitably generate more traffic and higher emissions.

"These politicians could have decided to reduce inequalities by investing in public transport and in our streets, but instead they decided to worsen inequalities and increase climate emissions by spending public funds on schemes that will further benefit the more affluent.

"We’re fed up with Scotland's political class mouthing empty platitudes about ‘net zero’ and ‘anti-poverty’ yet decade after decade making deliberate decisions to build new infrastructure that makes the country’s climate failure more and more certain, and neglects to provide fairer access to transport for the country’s poorest."

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Green MSP Mark Ruskell said: "The Scottish Greens have long been critical of the City-Regional Deal models and their focus on costly high carbon transport projects that were designed for a different era.

 

"Far too many of the deals have roads at the heart of them, with projects like the Sherrifhall Roundabout that are designed for ever-increasing traffic at a time when we badly need to be cutting the number of journeys we are making in cars.

"Some of these projects clearly need to be reconsidered, especially in light of this data and the worsening climate crisis. We should be investing in high quality public transport and infrastructure that will help us to cut emissions.

"Our cities must be accessible, liveable and sustainable. That cannot happen if we are ploughing ever greater sums into polluting projects."

The Scottish Government has been approached for comment.