Issue - meetings

Surrey County Council (SCC) is subject to pressures on its funding. This means that SCC needs to review its spend on the services that it provides for the county’s residents to ensure it delivers value for money. One of these is local transport and the County Council’s Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) includes a requirement to make savings through a Local Transport Review of £2m by 2017/18.

The Local Transport Review has been established to deliver the required savings via three streams: financial support to local buses, concessionary fares available to qualifying older and disabled people and community transport for people who cannot use conventional local bus services. The review seeks to find efficiencies, integrate services and grow the commercial value of the bus and community transport network.

The savings plans for year one for the review, have been drawn up following a wide reaching public consultation, from October 2014 to February 2015, with 6,800 residents and stakeholders having their say on the services that matter most to them. A further round of public consultation, from May to June 2015, gave residents and stakeholders an opportunity to feedback on the detailed proposals for changes to local bus services. 

This report describes how proposals have been designed to minimise the impact on residents and maximise cost savings without changing the current level of service offered through collaborative working. Patronage data and the assessment of the changes indicate that an average of 234 passengers will be impacted. However most of those shown as impacted will still have a reasonable level of access to a bus service.

Further proposed changes in other areas of Surrey will be consulted on in the subsequent two years of the review, to ensure the required savings are achieved.

[The decision on this item can be called in by the Economic Prosperity, Environment and Highways Board]

Following the Local Transport Review report to Cabinet on 23 September 2014,

1.         That the proposed changes to local bus services in Surrey, as detailed in Annex E of the submitted report be approved, and authority be delegated to the Cabinet Member for Environment and Planning and the Strategic Director for Environment & Infrastructure, to agree any minor adjustments before these changes take effect from 29 August 2015.

2.         That Surrey County Council retains its policy in relation to concessionary fares as described in paragraph 3 of the submitted report.

3.       That the Cabinet Member for Environment and Planning and the Strategic Director for Environment and Infrastructure  report back to Cabinet on the consideration of further proposals for change to local bus services in Surrey in the financial years 2016/17 and 2017/18.

Reasons for Decisions:

These recommendations will enable SCC to achieve the required savings needed from the Local Transport Review, as outlined in the MTFP. It will also ensure that Cabinet is kept fully informed throughout, and can take decisions on changes based on best practice and best value in subsequent years of the review.

Recommendations for change are based on:

·         Responses to two public consultations.

·         Full understanding of the impact on the changes to the public (including those with protected characteristics) and the environment.

·         Maintaining services that residents rely on the most such as services that get people to employment, healthcare, school and essential shopping.

·         A funding arrangement with partners that is financially sustainable in the long term.

[The decision on this item can be called in by the Economic Prosperity, Environment and Highways Board]

This report was presented by the Cabinet Member for Environment and Planning, who informed Members that the Medium Term Financial Plan (MTFP) included a requirement to make savings through a Local Transport Review of £2m by 2017/18 and this report set out proposals to achieve £840,000 savings in 2015/16, whilst at the same time maintaining services that residents relied on, which was and remained a challenging objective for the Council to achieve.

He said that the Surrey taxpayer currently subsidised half of the 29m bus journeys made in Surrey each year, which meant that 150 of the 200 services provided for residents were being subsidised.

He acknowledged that, whenever any reductions of bus services were made this would affect some residents and that was regretted. The report indicated that 234 passengers would be affected. However, officers had continued to work with the bus companies and a number of changes had been made since the report was published and therefore, he was pleased to report that number had now been reduced to 160 and officers would continue to work at reducing this further. He considered that this had been achieved by listening to residents and their representatives, and after the second consultation, talking to suppliers and being imaginative with solutions.  He confirmed that these changes would not impact on the proposed savings of £840,000.

He publically thanked the excellent work led by the Travel and Transport Group Manager and his team and said that they have done a remarkable job in reducing the cost of the bus service to Surrey’s council taxpayers, whilst protecting the integrity of the net work. He also thanked the Economic Prosperity, Environment & Highways Board, the Members’ reference group and the Local Committees and Members who have made valuable contributions.

 
He said that the Local Transport Review had been established to deliver savings via three streams: (1) financial support to local buses, (ii) concessionary fares, (iii) community transport, and before any services were considered officers worked with the suppliers and managed to deliver annual savings in excess of £300,000 by renegotiating contracts and working with the operators to work smarter.

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He also said that, twelve “School Special” public bus services had been commercialised and enhanced involving, in some cases, integration with certain Home-to-School “closed door” services provided by Children, Schools & Families, which had also lead to future savings for the Education Transport budget. However, he acknowledged that there was more work necessary in this area to establish how further savings can be realised. Officers were continuing to look at other ways of working with operators in seeking to grow the commercial value of buses and were positive about the work with Surrey University.

Moving onto the second element of the review - concessionary fares, namely disabled people being allowed to use their bus pass before 9:30 and after 23:00 and the companion passes allowing these holders to have a companion to travel with them free of charge should continue.

The cost of this provision was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 134