Proposal on Future Funding of Subsidised Bus Services in...

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Copyright 2009 Northumberland County Council

Proposal on Future Funding of Subsidised

Bus Services in Northumberland

July 2015



Background

Around 80% of bus service routes, which represent a greater proportion

of actual journeys, currently operating in Northumberland are run

commercially, i.e. without any Northumberland County Council input,

subsidy or support. This “commercial” network only covers routes that are

profitable.

The remaining 20% of services operating in Northumberland are either

fully or partly subsidised by NCC. The subsidised services comprise 51

routes or parts of routes that cover mainly rural but also some urban

areas.



Northumberland Bus Network

Fully Commercial bus services Fully or partly subsidised bus services



Subsidised Bus Services Consultation

An eight week consultation exercise has been carried out.

Consultees included:

All NCC Councillors

All Town and Parish Council Clerks

The North and West Village Hall Consortia

The VCS Assembly

Hard copies are available in Libraries/Mobile

The Council’s Peoples Panel

In total just under 800 individuals/organisations responded to the

survey.



Priorities for supported bus services

Where bus operators are not willing to provide commercial services, we may

procure additional services to help meet the needs of our residents. Decisions

on which services to develop and support have to be made in a prioritisation

framework that responds to the needs of the community, and identifies the best

ways of securing additional services.

We propose to prioritise the services that we support using a hierarchy of

service provision. For each of the three Priorities identified we have established

the rationale for their importance to the community and for us, as well as

assessing the actions which will ensure they can be delivered



The Proposal

Northumberland County Council needs to will ensure that any services that we

support financially meet the needs identified as part of this strategic review of

supported buses. This will be achieved through adopting the following 3 key

priorities:

• Priority 1 – Supporting Economic activity, enabling residents and

visitors to get to key centres during peak times

• Priority 2 – Supporting social activity, enabling residents to access

essential services during the day, on a minimum of one day per week.

• Priority 3 – Enable children to travel to the nearest suitable school or

college (this includes both those children eligible for free home to

school transport and those who are no eligible for home to school

transport)



Priority 1

Supporting economic activity, enabling residents and visitors to get to key

centres during peak times

Enabling access to employment is a key objective for Northumberland County

Council. It is therefore a high priority in assessing which bus services to support.

Our involvement in securing buses to help people get to work strengthens the

network to enable a wider range of employment opportunities for Northumberland

residents.

A total of 718 respondents answered this question with over 91% of respondents

endorsing the use of this priority when determining future funding of Subsidised Bus

Services:

Strongly Agree Agree

Neither Agree or

Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree

64% (461) 27% (195) 6% (41) 2% (17) 1% (4)



Priority 2 Supporting social activity, enabling residents to access essential services

during the day, on a minimum of one day per week.

We cannot support bus services every day to all communities. Our review of

accessibility suggests that for many non-employment or non-educational needs,

trips are generally made less frequently than five days per week, and therefore a

base level of a minimum provision of one day per week, Mondays to Saturdays

between the hours of 9am-5pm, will meet the core access needs of individuals and

communities.



Services:

Strongly Agree Agree Neither Agree or


48% (342) 36% (259) 9% (67) 4% (29) 2% (13)



Priority 3

Enable children to travel to the nearest suitable school or college, this

includes both those children eligible for free home to school transport and

those who are not eligible for home to school transport.

We have a statutory duty to enable eligible children to get to school for free.

Children are normally eligible for free home to school transport because of distance

to their nearest available school, because of a disability or low parental income.



Services:

Strongly Agree Agree

Neither Agree or


67% (475) 23% (160) 6% (45) 3% (20) 1% (9)



Sustainability Criteria Once a bus services has been assessed in terms of it contributions to the three strategic priorities, the

following sustainability test will be applied.

In the past Northumberland County Council has used a simple cost per passenger criteria to assess

value for money for subsidised bus services. The disadvantage of this is that it tends to give priority to

short urban services which may be less valuable than longer rural services. This is because it does

not take into account passenger journey length. The proposed system for Northumberland seeks to

overcome these deficiencies, while retaining a system that is simple and understandable. The system

combines: Cost per passenger and Passenger need/benefit

RED = Changes made as a result of feedback from survey respondents.

Key

Cost per passenger Shorter distance

town services

Wider conurbation type

services Rural services

Remote rural services

Reasonable alternatives

available

Very High £7.00+ 1 1 1 1 1

High £5.50-£6.99 1 1 2 2 1

Medium £4.00-£5.49 1 2 2 3 1

Low £2.50-£3.99 2 2 3 4 1

Very Low £0.00-£2.49 2 3 4 4 1

1 Services not proposed to be provided or provided in a modified form to meet criteria

2 Services provided subject to funding

3 Second highest priority services

4 Highest priority services



As part of the consultation respondents were asked whether they agree with the approach and

sustainability test outlined above. In total 715 respondents answered this question with over 56% of

respondents in favour of the approach, whilst not overwhelmingly favourable it is worth noting that only

15% of respondents where opposed to the sustainability test.

Northumberland County Council uses funds to subsidise some bus services that would otherwise not

run. This subsidy ranges from 96p to £14 per passenger journey. Respondents were asked what they

think the maximum subsidy the council should pay per passenger journey. In total 662 respondents

answered this question.

The consultation document proposed a cap of £6.00 per passenger journey however in response to

the comments raised by respondents we propose to raise the upper limit to £7.00 per passenger

journey, which equates to the ‘mean or average’ response of all respondents.

Sustainability Criteria

Strongly Agree Agree Neither Agree or


8% (60) 48% (346) 29% (207) 9% (62) 6% (40)

No Subsidy £0.00-£1.99 £2.00-£3.99 £4.00-£5.99 £6.00-£7.99 £8.00-£9.99 £10.00+

3% (23) 6% (44) 14% (77) 23% (159) 16% (107) 14% (95) 24% (157)



Sustainability Criteria For the purpose of this review we have re-defined services as

falling into one of the following definitions:

• Shorter distance town services – These services are short

distance services that primarily operate within the

boundaries of a town (within 2 miles of the centre of a town).

• Wider conurbation type services – These services primarily

carry passenger from edge of town settlements into the

nearest town or service centre (within 5 miles of town

centre).

• Rural services – These services carry passenger to towns

and service centres from more rural communities (within 10

miles of the nearest town centre).

• Remote rural services – These services carry passengers

from the most remote communities within Northumberland

(those communities that are more than 10 miles from the

nearest town or service centre).

For the purpose of this review we have identified a service centre

or town as being one of the 12 largest settlements within

Northumberland. The following map overleaf shows the 12

towns and the categorisation of routes that operate around and

between these communities.



Proposed Savings

The subsidised bus services budget is £2.4m and the Future Funding of

Subsidised Bus Services in Northumberland document proposed a £200,000

reduction (8 per cent of the total budget). The survey asked if this reduction

was reasonable.

The majority of respondents, almost two thirds stated that the budget reduction

should be smaller than proposed (64 per cent) while almost a third thought the

proposed reduction was reasonable (31 per cent); the remaining 5 per cent of

respondents thought there should be a larger reduction to the budget.

Given the current financial pressures facing the Council and the need to realise

savings across all departments it is recommended that whilst unpopular the

Council should proceed with the planned £200k reduction in budget, achieved

primarily through efficiencies and the renegotiation of contracts

Larger Reduction Reasonable Reduction Smaller Reduction

5% (36) 31% (217) 64% (441)



Approach to realising savings The Council will employ a number of practices to realise the savings whilst protecting

essential services and providing a stable and sustainable network:

Efficiencies through procurement – In the first instance the Council will ensure that it gets

the maximum value for its investment. We will work closely with the bus operators and

partners to identify opportunities to realise efficiencies and provide a network that meets

the needs of its users. This will include:

• Review those subsidised routes or part thereof that could be run on a commercial

basis without the need for any subsidy.

• Review what alternative provision is currently in place, the Council should not fund

any subsidised bus service that runs in competition with a commercial operation.

• Review current procurement practice to enable transport operators to provide

variances on the Council’s suggested timetable that would provide better value i.e.

reschedule and combine 1 day a week services so that it is possible for 1 bus to

deliver multiple services.

• Unlocking unused capacity in the existing bus network by rescheduling or combining

better with home to school transport.



Approach to realising savings continued…

Efficiencies through rationalisation – were services or parts thereof are

underused. The Council will:

• Increase patronage by consolidating passenger numbers on services at

existing peak times.

• Explore the viability of alternative services, such as community transport,

car scheme, lift share etc.



Approach to realising savings continued…

Protect existing services, by:

• Identifying possible funding opportunities from partner organisations

which will support the sustainability of the service.

• Putting in place a campaign to promote bus use throughout the

County, in order to drive up revenue through increased patronage.

• Continued work with transport providers to improve customer

experience of public transport.

• Continue to offer enhancements to the Concessionary Transport

Scheme to encourage public transport use i.e.

– Northumberland permits travel by concessionary passholder from

9:00am onwards (9:30am onwards nationally).

– The provision of companion passes for eligible disabled residents

– Free travel for pass holder before 9:00am when travelling for health

reasons



Bus

Proposal

& Results

Survey Results

Available on the Councils website at: http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/Default.aspx?page=17831



Implementation

• Snaiths contracts – changes implemented

from 1st August 2015

• Remainder of West Area – changes

implemented from 1st October 2015

• North Area – changes implemented from

1st April 2016



Any Questions

Kirsten Francis Principal Policy Officer Economic and Inclusion Policy Team

Directorate of Planning, Economy and Housing

Tel: 01670 624741

E-mail: [email protected]

Neil Easton Policy Officer Economic and Inclusion Policy Team

Directorate of Planning, Economy and Housing

Tel: 01670 624743

E-mail: [email protected]

CONTACT DETAILS

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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