Sunday 9 October 2016

Funding for Wiltshires buses next year

Update - Wiltshire Council has decided to cut £500k from next year's bus budget rather than five times that amount which was their least draconian financial opt...ion in the consultation. Excellent news; perhaps not sustainable to future years, but a real window of opportunity which possibility they acknowledge in their reports.
They are proposing to "buck the national trend and safeguard the services people really need".
Article on their web site at http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/…/bus-services-consultation-hel… and cabinet papers with some more detail mirrored at http://option247.uk/ptr_20161003.pdf .
Personal initial comment: "very sensible news on the buses - I understand that Wiltshire Council has scaled back the cuts it had planned to make in bus service support next year. That means that the support budget will be £4.6 million rather than the previously planned £2.6 million, versus £5.1 million this year. The Council has stated that 97% of passenger journeys are safe, and that services costing over £3.50 per passenger in support will be the only ones subject to review this year. This news is very welcome in that it protects many services that people depend on for next year, and that it opens a window of opportunity to review / recast services for the medium and longer term once the options offered by the Bus Services Bill (report to House of Lords on 12th October) and the linked statutory instruments have been fully defined and initially tested. Cornwall Council (covering a similar sized area and with a similar population density to Wiltshire) are at the forefront of using new powers, with a partnership that could be backed up by franchising if necessary, and although the Council there are busy doing the work rather than doing lots of presentations, I was honoured to be able to attend their first presentation (“of very very few at this stage”) in Plymouth last month, and had the opportunity to speak with their lead who was inspirational, copied his presentation to me, and has offered to talk / help to us in Wiltshire as things progress. We are likely to have one or two highly charged discussions relating to the 3% of passenger journeys (that’s 300,000 rides) subject to review; some services can be sensibly restructured ahead of bus service changes, but some are parts of support “baskets” and we need to be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. I know of one service, for example, that’s often full and standing and yet part of a subsidy group that’ll be up for review."


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