Mr. Hugh Creegan:

Approximately four years ago, through the Department of Transport, there was an agreement put in place that all local authorities could have a certain number of staff for an active travel unit. It is fair to say that they are all struggling to recruit that staff complement. Indeed, when they recruit their staff complement fully, the neighbouring local authority has a competition and some of the staff will go over there. It has been a challenge for all local authorities to get the staff in-house. Equally, there is such a booming construction market at certain levels that getting resources to design schemes externally is a problem. That said, local authorities and design teams that want to get projects done generally are able to work their way through them and get them done. As Ms Graham said, we have more projects than funding available this year and all of the councils are pursuing all of them pretty expeditiously.