Shetland Youth Voice - Transport Summit

On 14th January 2025, the Shetland Youth Voice Transport Summit brought together 38 young people and 14 key partners aboard the MV Hjatland to tackle the top youth-voted priority: Transport.  The event was designed to give young people a direct voice on bus, ferry, and air travel issues — and to ensure decision-makers heard them first-hand. 

Background and purpose 

Transport was voted as the Shetland Youth Voice’s number one priority in October 2024.  Members identified it as essential to education, employment, and social life, as well as influencing whether young people stay in Shetland long-term.  The Summit aimed to explore the challenges and co-design solutions with transport leaders, from local councillors to the Chief Executive of Transport Scotland. 

Activities and delivery 

The event featured four themed workshops: 

• Transport Connectivity in Shetland – mapping journeys, identifying gaps in timetables, and discussing integration of bus and ferry services. 
• Transport Issues with Cllr. Moraig Lyall – exploring accessibility, affordability, reliability, and safety. 
• School Bus Transport with Brenda Leask (Executive Manager, Schools) – sharing positives and tackling negatives such as overcrowding, behaviour, and vehicle condition. 
• Air Travel with Loganair – discussing costs, reliability, and proposals for better youth discounts. 

Partners included senior SIC staff, national transport officials, and operators such as Loganair and NorthLink Ferries. 

Impact 

• Clear priorities:  Three headline recommendations emerged — extend bus schedules (especially Sundays), improve young person discounts for off-island travel, and enhance safety on late-night buses. 
• Council engagement:  SYV members presented their findings to SIC’s Environment & Transport Committee, as well as to Scottish Government Minister for Transport and Connectivity, Jim Fairlie MSP.  This secured praise from councillors and a commitment to explore potential changes. 
• Media coverage:  The event and findings featured in Shetland News, raising public awareness of young people’s transport concerns. 
• Youth empowerment:  Feedback scores showed high enjoyment (8.1/10) and strong perceived learning (7.9/10), with participants reporting greater confidence to speak up (8.0/10). 

“Well done to Shetland Youth Voice and supporting partners for such an innovative event. It was great to see young people, decision makers and transport providers onboard MV Hjatland whilst berthed in Lerwick Harbour coming together to share thoughts and discuss ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing the reports from the transport and connectivity summit and ensuring these are fed through to existing structures to shape services and future developments” - Martin Summers Team Leader of SIC Youth & Employability Service 

Learning and next steps 

The Summit demonstrated the value of holding youth-led, topic-specific events in partnership with decision-makers.  Next steps include following up with SIC and transport providers on agreed actions, continuing to monitor progress, and feeding recommendations into ongoing studies such as the Inter-Island Transport Connectivity programme. 

Contribution to the Shetland Partnership

• Participation:  Giving young people a direct platform with decision-makers. 
• People:  Supporting skills in communication and advocacy. 
• Place:  Working towards better-connected, safer, and more accessible transport networks. 
• Money:  Addressing affordability to ensure transport isn’t a barrier to opportunity.