Overview

In April, 2023, the Scottish Government opened a public consultation on the matter of creating sustainable and resilient places where the majority of people can meet their daily needs within 20 mins by foot, cycling, wheeling, or public transport. This initiative aims to balance the environmental impact, improve the quality of life, decrease health inequalities, and foster local economic activities.

It is important to mention that this initiative of creating ‘Local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods’ is to be operated in the Scotland's geographical context, with many rural/island areas in its territory. But ‘the 20 minutes should not be considered as the defining or limiting factor for local living in any context but as a useful gauge of the aspiration around access and proximity to services within a neighbourhood to enable people to live well locally’ – as it is stated in the Scottish Government consultation.

What CIHT thinks about this?

CIHT supports ‘Local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods’ initiative and believes it might bring numerous benefits, such as:

• Reducing carbon emissions
• Encouraging active travel
• Supporting local economic activities
• Creating a ‘community’ and a sense of belonging
• Promoting equality and equity
• Satisfy the majority of living requirements at all stages of life
• Bringing positive health impact

Nevertheless, some challenges need further consideration, such as:

• How to foster behavioural change and get people out of their cars
• Existing poor infrastructure in many areas
• Privatisation of bus services that prioritises commercially attractive routes while ignoring the needs of the local dwellers
• Lack of understanding of this initiative that leads to misinformation on social media and conspiracy theories
• Lack of financial resources and support for local authorities
• Insufficient integration of sustainable modes of transport

But as previously stated in the CIHT Fixing a failing planning and transport system report, CIHT believes sustainable neighbourhoods are achievable by better planning and transport integration. By ensuring that the location of developments fosters accessibility to active travel infrastructure and public transport networks, we can facilitate access to local services and achieve the objectives of ’20-minute neighbourhoods.’

For CIHT’s consultation response, CIHT hosted a webinar and a workshop on ‘Local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods’ along with the survey distributed among CIHT members. CIHT conducted the analysis based on the opinions of 109 webinar attendees and 40 survey responses.

• CIHT has found that 81% of respondents support this initiative, while 7% are against it and 12% are unsure.
• ‘Local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods’ are extremely challenging to be achieved in rural/island settings, which is confirmed by 78% of our survey participants.
• 72% of respondents believe that local authorities do not have enough financial resources to support ‘Local living’.
• Digital accessibility plays a key role in achieving ’20-minute neighbourhoods,’ but there need to be certain solutions to ensure it does not lead to social exclusion.

There is much more information on 'Local living and 20-minute neighbourhoods' in our full response, you can read it here.

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Help & Support 

For all policy and technical enquiries regarding the response please email technical@ciht.org.uk 

For all press enquiries please email communications@ciht.org.uk