Transport in UK

Trends
While the average number of journeys (traffic) made by people in the UK has remained fairly stable over the last 25 years, total annual passenger distance has increased by 52 per cent to an average of 7000 miles per person[i].
This increase has accompanied a shift from public to private transport - primarily the car (Fig 1). Road traffic has grown by 77 per cent since 1980. Travel by rail has increased by 40 per cent and travel by air has trebled. Distance travelled by bus and coach has fallen to 10 per cent below the 1980 level.
In contrast during this period the average distance walked fell by 22 per cent from 244 to 190 miles a year.

Changing components
Many factors affect traffic levels and the distribution of travel amongst different modes of transport. The recent trends shown in Figure 1 have resulted from an increase in car ownership and the total number of drivers, a fall in levels of car occupancy and little change in the real cost of motoring compared to the rising real costs of public transport.
Freight
The movement of goods around Great Britain has also increased markedly in the last 30 years. Almost all of this increase can be attributed to the movement of goods by road, which grew from 88 billion tonne kilometres in 1972 to 157 billion tonne kilometres in 2001[iii].
The increase in road freight reflects an increase in distance travelled rather than in the overall quantity of goods lifted. The total weight moved has remained fairly constant at about two billion tonnes of goods each year.
Infrastructure
The UK currently has: 375 000 km of road, covering an area the size of Leicestershire; 30.6 million licensed vehicles, which if they were lined up head to tail would go twice around the world; 16 000 km of railway with over 2500 stations; 2000 miles of navigable canal; and 10 000 miles of cycle path[iv].
Demographic and geographic characteristics
People in the highest income quintile on average make 40 per cent more trips than those in the lowest and travel three times a greater distance. In 2002/03, 58 per cent of households in the lowest income quintile did not have access to a car.
While men and women on average make the same number of trips per year, men travel much greater distances. In 2002 men on average travelled 8000 miles, compared to 6000 miles for women.
The total distance travelled by people in a year relates to how urban their area is. The distance travelled by car is about 40 per cent lower than the national average for people living in London and 45 per cent higher than the average for people living in rural areas[v].
Safety
In 2002 3,431 people were killed in road traffic accidents and nearly 36, 000 were seriously injured. However, fatality rates on all modes of transport have fallen in the last 25 years.
In terms of fatalities per passenger kilometre air travel is the safest mode of transport and motorcycle travel the most risky[vi]. Motorcyclists are 30 times more likely to be killed in an accident than a car driver[vii].
As Table 1 shows, together with Sweden and the Netherlands, the UK has one of the best road safety records.

Table 1: road deaths in the EU per 100,000 population
Country Road deaths per 100000 population
UK 6.1
Netherlands 6.2
Sweden 6.2
Denmark 8.1
Finland 8.4
Germany 8.5
Ireland 10.7
Italy 11.1
Austria 11.9
France 13.8
Spain 13.8
Belgium 14.5
Luxembourg 15.9
Greece 19.3
Portugal 21

Health
Walking and cycling as forms of exercise can contribute towards well being. However, both have been in long-term decline. Between 1989/91 and 2002/03 the average distance walked has fallen from 237 to 191 miles a year. The number of stages of a journey cycled also declined steadily.
Environment
Between 1990 and 2002, total UK greenhouse gas emissions declined 10 per cent. However, the transport industries were one of the few exceptions to this downward trend. Greenhouse gas emissions from the transport industries were 47 per cent higher in 2002 than in 1990.
The UK transport industries were responsible for emitting the equivalent of 86.0 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2002 compared with 58.5 million tonnes in 1990. Greenhouse gas emissions from road transport now constitute 18 per cent of all UK emissions.


Table 2: Green house gas emissions from different types of UK Transport in million Tonnes of CO2 equivalent, VIII
Mode ………….1990 1995 1997 1999 2002
Buses & coaches 5.6 5.6 5.3 4.9 4.8
Road freight 15.8 19.2 21.3 21.7 23.4
Rail 2.5 2.4 2 2 1.5
Water 11.6 12.1 16.8 14.7 15
Air 20.2 26 30.5 37.2 37.5
Private vehicle 59.2 57.6 62.3 64 62.8




[i] Department for Transport, Transport Tends at: www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents
/sectionhomepage/dft_transstats_page.hcsp
[ii] Matheson J and Summerfield C (2000) Social Trends 30,
Office of National Statistics, at: www.statistics.gov.uk
/STATBASE/xsdataset.asp?More=Y&vlnk=1455&All=Y&B2.x=58&B2.y=15
[iii] Summerfield C and Babb P (2003) Social Trends 33,
Office of National Statistics, at: www.statistics.gov.uk
/STATBASE/ssdataset.asp?vlnk=6506
[iv] Transport 2000, Facts and Figures, at: www.transport2000.org.uk/factsandfigures/Facts.asp
[v] Department for Transport, How people travel, at: www.dft.gov.uk/stellent/groups/dft_transstats/documents
/page/dft_transstats_028357.pdf
[vi] Summerfield C and Babb P (2004) Social Trends 34:
192, Office of National Statistics at: www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_social/Social_Trends34
/Social_Trends34.pdf
[vii] Department for Transport, Think! Road Safety Facts and
Figures at: www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/statistics.htm
[viii] Greenhouse gas emissions from transport, Office for
National Statistics, at: www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/
theme_environment/transport_
report.pdf


Local quality of life

Area profiles is a pioneering Audit Commission pilot project to test the feasibility of bringing together all the data, information and assessments about local quality of life and services Footnote 1. The area profiles approach has the advantage of going beyond the use of just indicators, or a focus on only one particular agency, to look at all the services and quality of life issues in a local area.

An area profile places strong emphasis on people and place and on issues that cut across traditional service boundaries – for example, a complete picture of the needs of specific sectors of the community, such as children or older people.

Area profiles are created using a variety of tools. Each tool helps the user explore and understand the quality of life and local services with regard to an aspect of the local community. A good area profile involves analysis of the following aspects:

indicators of local quality of life and context statistics;
public funding into and spending patterns within a local area;
local residents’ and service users’ views on quality of life;
the LSP partners’ views on quality of life and services;
inspectorate judgements about local services;
the community and voluntary sector’s capacity and contribution to local quality of life and services; and
the business and private sectors’ capacity and contributions to local quality of life and services.

The profiles produced by each of these seven components are then used in the final process:

bringing it all together – a synthesis of the findings.

The result of this synthesis is an area profile that can be used in different ways:

To provide a summary for the public of all the data and assessments for the local area. For example, key findings could be published online, in a leaflet, or in a local newspaper article. This will help local people to hold public services to account and empower them to take decisions about priorities and services in their local area.
LSP partners (council, police, health, voluntary and private sectors) could apply the information to highlight problem areas where improvement is most needed.
The government, national agencies, and regulators could draw on area profiles to identify strengths, weaknesses and trends in local areas. This will help them to agree on how best to target their support and regulatory activities.

To support users in area profiling the Audit Commission is developing a web-based ‘one-stop shop’, comprising data and information about local public services, including the views of residents and service users and the assessments of regulators. This will mean the end of searching numerous websites, published reports, performance information databases and manuals to find out important information about a local area. For the first time, data and information about a local area will be brought together in one place in an easily accessible format that is available to the public, regulators and service providers.

The data and information will be structured around the ten quality of life themes used within the local quality of life indicator set. The Audit Commission sees the local quality of life indicators playing an important role in providing a ‘headline’ set of indicators to provide a snapshot overview of the quality of life and services in a local area.



Source: Audit Commission Website

1 The Audit Commission began piloting area profiles in 2003 and now has 27 local areas and a range of national stakeholders working together to test all the tools and the website model outlined above. The pilot is due to finish at the end of December 2005.

Overview of social auditing:

A participatory approach to social auditing is viewed as part of a process that involves awareness creation and dialogue between employers, workers and their representatives. It aims to ensure that more insecure and vulnerable workers, who often have low confidence and literacy levels, have a voice in social audits.It involves the use of tools drawn from participatory rural appraisal and participatory learning and action. It stresses the need to use local auditors, with local knowledge and language and sensitive to gender issues. This is in contrast to the culture of snapshot social auditing, based on brief formal visits by outside professional auditors. Here the focus is on policing suppliers, who in turn carry out the minimum changes needed to pass an audit, rather than making sustainable improvements in working conditions.
Through awareness creation, a participatory approach attempts to chang the mindsets of employers, and increase understanding of their rights by workers. The focus is not only to ensure that minimum labour standards are met,but also that improvement in employment practices reach all groups of workers. Such an approach faces many challenges, but it represents a shift away from a formal top-down compliance orientation, to the greater empowerment of workers and their representative organisations as an essential part of the process of improving labour standards and working conditions.

At a broader level, social auditing is a way of measuring and reporting on an organisation's social and ethical performance. An organisation which takes on an audit makes itself accountable to its stakeholders and commits itself to following the audit's recommendations. A participatory approach to codes of labour practice, compared with snapshot social auditing, puts greater emphasis on involvement of workers and workers organisations in the process of code implementation and assessment.This approach is sensitive to uncovering and thus addressing more complex issues such as gender discrimination and sexual harassment. These are issues more likely to be experienced by insecure non-permanent workers, who are often women, whose voices snapshot audits usually fail to pick up. They are less “visible” issues, that are unlikely to be resolved through a simple compliance approach. The goal of a participatory approach is a process of awareness creation and improvement that is more gender sensitive.

Third party social audits normally involve a snapshot visit by an external professional auditor or auditing team to a firm or farm to monitor compliance. However, snapshot audits often fail to pick up issues that are not easily verified by company records or physical inspection, such as gender discrimination. A participatory approach to social auditing and codes of labour practice comes from a different perspective: it focuses on auditing as a process. One that more directly involves workers and worker organisations in order to create the basis for more sustainable improvement in working conditions and compliance. A gender-sensitive approach to social auditing is required to ensure that codes of labour practice help to protect more vulnerable temporary and casual workers, who are often women.They are often concentrated in insecure work (seasonal, casual, migrant, homework and contract work) and found in the most vulnerable forms of employment with little protection. It is amongst these groups of workers that the worst conditions of employment are usually found - low wages, long hours, lack of contracts, weak unionisation, poor health and safety, lack of social insurance or employment benefits. They rarely have access to formal legal rights or social protection, even though they work for global export suppliers. It is amongst these workers that the risks of non-compliance are therefore highest.

The following characteristics, typical of female workers in developing countries, are of key importance when considering the nature of the approach and methods to be used in the social audit process, if the developmental aspect is to be realised: a low literacy level, a lack of awareness of their rights as workers in civil society, cultural norms and beliefs that dictate the subordinate role of women in society. Social auditors need to be particularly sensitive to gender issues if they are to reveal non-compliances in such situations. Capturing the specific issues faced by women workers needs careful planning to ensure their inclusion in a social audit. In some countries, a condition of a male worker's employment in agriculture is that his wife (or female relatives) are available to work when required by the employer, restricting her ability to freely choose her employment. Freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are respected. Women are often concentrated in temporary, casual and home work, where insecurity of employment increases the fear that unionisation would result in recrimination by employers denying them access to future work, undermining their right to freedom of association.

Working conditions are safe and hygienic. Male workers who are handling chemicals should have access to adequate personal protective equipment, and training in their use. However, women workers who are not directly handling chemicals are rarely protected, even though they might be exposed to them indirectly.

No discrimination is practised. Women workers regularly experience discrimination, for example through lack of access to certain jobs, training or promotion. It is common for women to form the majority of the workforce, yet men make up the majority of the skilled, supervisory and management staff (which a gender breakdown of the workforce will reveal).

Regular Employment is provided. Women workers are more often concentrated in insecure work, with less access than men to permanent or regular employment. A gender breakdown of the different categories of worker will reveal this as another form of gender discrimination.

Living wages are paid. Many workers in export production receive less than a living wage. But female workers are more likely to receive unequal wages compared to male workers for similar types of work, reducing their likelihood even further of earning a living wage.

Child labour shall not be used. Child labour is more likely to be found where workers, especially low paid women workers, are receiving wages too low to sustain their households or pay for childcare provision.

Working hours are not excessive. Long working hours and excessive overtime, often addressed in code principles, have extensive implications for childcare responsibilities.

No harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed. Verbal harassment of workers is common for male and female workers, but sexual harassment, whether verbally or physically, is usually a sensitive issue which affects women.

It is important that an auditor is aware of these implicit rather than explicit gender issues in Code principles, and that they have the skills and tools to uncover such issues, both in individual and group interviews.


Central to a participatory approach is the process involved, of which the final social audit is an outcome rather than the means in itself. This process involves various stages. The first and most important is that of awareness creation amongst employers and workers. The second is the pre-audit, where issues are revealed and assessed, accompanied by engagement with the employer, workers and worker representatives to develop an implementation plan which will lead to improvement. The third stage is the final audit, where the employer is formally assessed for compliance. If the first and second stages have been effective, passing the audit should be the logical final outcome. The philosophy from the beginning is helping the employer to achieve successful compliance, rather than being policed or reprimanded for failure to comply.
Few producers or senior staff are aware of the managerial significance of communicating with a workforce which is predominantly female. This relates particularly to policy and work-related information which is normally passed through a .chain of command, involving middle and junior managerial staff that are predominantly male. This chain of command often creates barriers in communication between senior management and female and insecure workers.

The timing of the audit is also important in ensuring temporary, casual, migrant and other non-permanent workers are available for interview, as women are often concentrated in these categories. This means that audits usually have to be undertaken at the peak of the season, or of production activity. This might create some resistance from management, who would prefer a slacker period. But the risk is that only permanent workers are on site at this time, and the audit would miss more vulnerable workers who are often women.

The records check at the end of the pre-audit also provides an opportunity for the auditor to investigate key gender issues such as equal pay for equal work, or equal access to training and promotion. as well as verifying data obtained verbally or visually. It can help to reveal the degree of female workers. involvement in trade unions and/or workers. committees, where they can participate in meaningful decision-making processes.

Experience in the pilots and research projects highlighted the importance of using local social auditors, who are able to speak the language of the interviewees, are aware of the cultural background of the workers concerned and are qualified and experienced in the use of the participatory methodology.

A formal, authoritative style of interviewing can easily lead workers into remaining silent and disengaged from a social audit. The use of participatory tools when conducting worker interviews however, can help workers to open up and engage more actively in the process.

The use of such tools is only one aspect of a wider participatory approach to codes of labour practice. The philosophy behind this approach is that workers should not simply be passive objects of an external audit, but should become more actively engaged in a process of improvement of their working conditions. Worker engagement can be extended through developing ongoing local independent monitoring and verification involving worker representatives as part of a more sustainable approach.

Local country codes of labour practice, promoted and supported by a multi-stakeholder association which includes industry, trade unions, relevant NGOs and government representatives, would provide greater local accountability. Facilitation, and monitoring and verification of a code of labour practice contribute towards the improvement of labour conditions and standards, of management/worker relations and ultimately of the growth of more ethical trading.

From a gender perspective, local multi-stakeholder initiatives present both opportunities and challenges. Women in insecure employment are often least likely to be organised or unionised, reinforcing their fragmentation and vulnerability. Multi-stakeholder initiatives that involve trade unions and NGOs sensitive to the needs of such women workers are more likely to ensure gender issues facing such workers are addressed. The combination of participatory social auditing and independent monitoring based on stakeholder engagement can thus help to give voice to such vulnerable workers. However, gender discrimination is often deeply embedded in employment practice and social relations. Local organisations (trade unions and NGOs) which are steeped in that social context could also serve to reinforce existing gender norms. Hence, whilst local multi-stakeholder initiatives can open up the space for gender and racial discrimination to be addressed, this is not automatic. They create an opportunity, but not a guarantee, for the enhanced participation of insecure women workers in the implementation of codes. Despite these challenges, local multi-stakeholder initiatives are becoming more established, and represent an important move away from a northern led top-down approach to codes of labour practice.