Examination of Witnesses (Questions 222-239)
COUNCILLOR TONY
PAGE, COUNCILLOR
SHONA JOHNSTONE
AND MR
VINCE CHRISTIE
10 NOVEMBER 2004
Q222 Chairman: I understand that none
of you wish to say anything at the start. Do you think local authorities
are good at funding rail services?
Mrs Johnstone: On the whole, I
do not think that local authorities do have a very strong role
in funding rail schemes. One of the reasons for that is that local
authorities do not have the same responsibility for providing
rail services in the way that we do to provide other public transport
services, for example, buses.
Q223 Chairman: Do you think they are
very aware of the role of rail?
Mrs Johnstone: I would say so,
yes.
Mr Page: Could I just make one
distinction at this point? There are, of course, groupings of
local authorities that you will be familiar with in the PTEs with
different legal remits and powers. Therefore, their interests
are, I think, more focused on rail than is probably the case outside
the PTE areas, such as those areas Councillor Johnstone and I
represent, where we are much more marginal players.
Q224 Chairman: We were told recently
that if a certain amount of the money suddenly becomes available,
local councillors are much more likely to have a road scheme up
their sleeves and to think about funding rural railways. Would
you think that was unfair?
Mrs Johnstone: I think it probably
is the case that we are more likely to have other schemes that
are on the shelf, so to speak. One of the reasons for that is
that rail schemes are much more about taking forward with rail
organisations such as the SRA or Network Rail, and it is therefore
much more difficult to have a package quickly ready if you have
some funding coming through that you need to be able to spend
quickly. It is much more difficult to put together that sort of
package quickly for a rail scheme; it is much easier to do it
for some of the other schemes.
Mr Page: The other point to emphasise,
Chairman, is the issue of cost and transparency. As Councillor
Johnstone said, in terms of delivering road schemes, the local
authority is fully aware of all the constraints, often knows the
land in question already and will have tendered perhaps already
part or all of the scheme. In dealing with the rail industry,
one is dealing with an organisation that is considerably less
transparent in terms of the way in which costs are allocated,
and indeed simply finding out an accurate picture can often be
very challenging. That is, of course, one of the issues that I
know the Secretary of State has asked the Rail Regulator to look
at in terms of disaggregating the costs and enabling local authorities
to see what the real costs are.
Q225 Chairman: Is that the only reason
why it is difficult to initiate community rail partnerships?
Mr Page: No, it is much more fragmented.
I think, in terms of many local authorities, the sheer fragmentation
of the current structure militates against that. Fundamentally,
the lack of clarity and uncertainty over funding streams is probably
the biggest obstacle.
Mrs Johnstone: I would say also
that the constantly changing scenario of the rail industry with
who is running what does not help us as local authorities to be
able to work with one particular organisation. If we wanted to
work with a train operating company, for example, certainly in
my area, we are in a situation where the franchising means that
they are concentrating on the need to try to maintain their business
in future through franchising. You have different changes with,
for example, Railtrack, Network Rail and the Strategic Rail Authority
constantly changing the playing field, if you like, in the rail
industry. That makes it much more difficult for local authorities
to know who to deal with.
Q226 Chairman: I am prepared to accept
that up to a point, Mrs Johnstone, but you must constantly deal
with firms in roads which are changing and where there are changes
from time to time in the way that the law affects roads. Why is
it that it is only in rail that we get tizzed?
Mrs Johnstone: I would not necessarily
accept that. We have long-term contracts, for example, with companies,
consultants, and contractors drawing up road schemes and such
like. That is a much more stable scenario.
Q227 Mrs Ellman: What has the impact
been of the withdrawal of rail passenger partnerships?
Mr Page: The LGA undertook a survey
last year. We can let you have a copy of this. Certainly, whilst
the response was not by any means comprehensive, it did indicate
some major problems.
Q228 Chairman: Mr Christie, will you
tell us about this and why have you not said it to us already?
Mr Christie: We might have offered
it to you but I do not think you asked. It was not really done
for this purpose; it was done for the purposes of liaising with
the SRA on the basis that it would be nice to have partnerships
to develop stations. Going on from the discussion of the previous
question, lots of partners need to become involved if, as a local
authority, you want to spend some money. Sometimes it takes a
very long time to get them all to agree together. One of the key
elements for the Government's part of the funding would have been
a rail partnership fund. I think people thought, having been announced
as a big issue and a very positive development, that it was suddenly
stopped with very little notice. That caused quite a lot of consternation
in authorities which were working the schemes up. If you spend
money working something up and it suddenly to stops, then there
is trouble.
Q229 Mrs Ellman: Can you name any specific
schemes that were stopped half-way and can you give us a full
picture of what the actual impact of the withdrawal of those funds
has actually been on rural services?
Mr Christie: I have not actually
got the sheet in front of me.
Mrs Johnstone: I could give you
a very local example of a station just north of Cambridge which
had a car park funded partly through the rail partnership fund,
which was very successful, so successful that we need to extend
that car park. It has been very difficult to try to get the funding
together to do that extension as a result of the withdrawals.
My reaction to your question was: it is depressing.
Mr Christie: There is an example
here for Norfolk County Council. There are several partnership
schemes in the local transport plan both for the passenger facility
and freight, including car park improvements, subsidised evening
services and improved freight terminals. The objective was for
a better passenger interchange and for rail freight.
Q230 Chairman: What are we talking about?
Are we talking about car parks?
Mr Christie: We are talking about
car parks. The departments would have been the SRA and the East
of England Development Agency. The comment was: "RPP and
freight grant suspension after only one recent scheme (Downham
Market car park) completed, seen to be a source of considerable
concern and potentially stopping a series of schemes for which
Norfolk partnership funding already allocated". Norfolk partnership
funding had already been allocated to develop these schemes and
that was stopped. That is a bullet point which highlights that
scheme. There are a number like that. This goes back to the beginning
of 2003, so I imagine quite a lot of these things are still stopped.
Q231 Mrs Ellman: Should rail schemes
be included in local transport plans?
Mr Page: In terms of the point
I made earlier about PTEs and their remit, there is a strong case,
and particularly if the precedent set by Mersey Travel is extended
to other PTEs and they are given a more active franchising role.
Q232 Chairman: We can call them passenger
transport executives, to give them their full title.
Mr Page: I am corrected. The point
is that, outside the passenger transport executives, I think there
is less of a case, and certainly I do not think local authorities
would be actively bidding for funding because we do not have control
over the assets and infrastructure in the way that Councillor
Johnstone referred to with road schemes, or indeed when it comes
to tendering for bus services where we are the client and we can
have some certainty over delivering something within a specified
timeframe. That is very important with LTP funding. I think the
uncertainty and the fragmentation of the industry would mean that
most local authorities would fight shy of that.
Mrs Johnstone: I would agree.
As a shire member, I would be wary about wanting to take on funding
for the rail schemes, mainly because most of the railway lines
through to Cambridgeshire, for example, go through the county;
they are not within the county. Whilst I am very much in favour
of building up partnerships with my neighbouring authorities,
I think it would be quite a complex structure to set up in order
to bid for LTP funds for a rail scheme.
Mr Page: The cynic might also
add, Chairman, that passing funds to local authorities is all
well and good but, of course, if those funds were not adequate
for purpose, you would be putting us in the front line when it
came to announcing railway closures.
Q233 Mrs Ellman: What are the biggest
barriers in the way of integrating bus and rail services?
Mr Page: How long have you got?
As you will know from an earlier evidence session we did on school
transport, the issue of bus regulation and the structure of the
industry outside London was discussed. I think, as has been pointed
out in our submission to you and in various other submissions,
the fact is that the deregulated bus industry can only be controlled
where we let tenders at the margin. The only way we could ensure
integration with a given train timetable is if we actually let
the contract and specified the time. If it is part of the 85%
of the commercial network, then we would simply be reliant upon
pressure and influence on the operators to achieve some form of
integration. Of course, the onus is on bus operators to integrate
with rail, not on the rail operators to change their timetables
to suit the bus operators. That is the reality. We would need
a change in the current regulatory regime to deliver that greater
integration of timetabling and also of ticketing, and then that
leads us on to our old friend the Office of Fair Trading and competition
issues when it comes to delivering greater co-ordination over
ticketing. The current regulatory regime is not really conducive.
Q234 Mrs Ellman: What is the minimum
change that you would need to make?
Mr Christie: As far as the OFT
is concerned, one of the areas where I think the SRA's community
rail led document did not understand the complexities of the Office
of Fair Trading is in the OFT theory that if two bus operators
agree anything with each other, including the railways or local
authorities, then the fares are bound to go up and it is bound
to be anti-competitive, which we do not accept. That is something
to which they stick. If you are going to have integration of buses
and rail at a local level and there is more than one operator,
it is very difficult at the moment, and it may be a European problem
on competition, to get over that issue. Integration between bus
and rail on a through-ticketing basis is not necessarily the same
as on joint fare scales; it makes it easier.
Q235 Mr Donohoe: Are you in favour of
the substitution of the high quality, high frequency bus services
instead of rural rail services?
Mrs Johnstone: The simple answer
to that is "no". I would prefer to see the rural rail
services running where that is possible.
Q236 Mr Donohoe: Why?
Mrs Johnstone: I think there is
a substantial body of evidence that railways are more attractive
and, in terms of social inclusion, they can provide much greater
opportunities. There is evidence that where railways no longer
run and bus services have been provided, it is very easy for those
bus services in the future no longer to be provided, and this
is on the argument that they are not commercially viable.
Q237 Mr Donohoe: Do you have evidence
of that?
Mrs Johnstone: I do not have that
specifically for Cambridgeshire.
Q238 Mr Donohoe: Do you think that concessionary
fares should apply on community rail links?
Mrs Johnstone: I think they often
do already operate on community railways. The maximum flexibility
and tailoring of the right fares for the particular circumstances
is probably a better approach, rather than one size fits all and
you must have some sort of concessionary fare.
Q239 Mr Donohoe: Do you think it is the
local authority's responsibility to have these subsidies paid
for by the local authority, that you should subsidise fares?
Mrs Johnstone: District councils
provide subsidised passes for bus transport. There could well
be arguments that that should be the case also with trains. If
there is not a suitable bus service but there is a train service
that runs, then there are arguments that you should be able to
use that bus pass on the train.
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