Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR PAT
HAYES, MR
MARK BENNETT,
COUNCILLOR DAVID
SPARKS, COUNCILLOR
TONY PAGE
AND MR
BOB DONALDSON
17 MAY 2006
Q60 Clive Efford: How much has the
Mayor's transport strategy been informed by dialogue with the
London boroughs? Is this a sort of top down imposition which really
imposes the shape of the Local Implementation Plans on local authorities
or is this a two way thing? Have any of them been rejected?
Mr Hayes: It is very much a two
way process. The Mayor's transport strategy sets the overall framework
and we are working with the boroughs at the moment in terms of
getting their plans to a position of being agreed; then we look
and identify their local priorities within this overall framework.
This has been one of the things that has been very positive in
that it has enabled local authorities, within the overall guidance
of the Mayor's strategy, to see what we need on the ground, what
are our local priorities and how can we work these up into detailed
planning. I think it has delivered a degree of discipline of thought
around that and in identifying where the funding will come from.
One of the things that we have also done is to integrate what
was previously our borough spending plan into the Local Implementation
Plan process so that local authorities can now do specific schemes
through their Local Implementation Plans. There is a direct link
between the strategy and funding and that is an important element
of local subsidiarity.
Q61 Clive Efford: Can I ask the LGA
if they would welcome the Department for Transport playing a hands
on role similar to TFL with local authorities in coming up with
their Local Implementation Plans?
Cllr Page: I would not like to
suggest that there is a similar relationship between the DFT and
individual local authorities, no.
Q62 Clive Efford: Would you like
the Department or Transport to have a closer relationship in developing
those plans?
Cllr Page: It is always welcome
to have the DFT involved in discussions about the development
of local priorities, yes, if that is then accompanied with a buy-in
from central government in terms of grant assistance and a realistic
financing regime but clearly if it is not accompanied with appropriate
resourcing I would not see any purpose in that exercise.
Q63 Mr Clelland: Councillor Page
is choosing his words very carefully. I would have thought the
answer would be "definitely not". However, is there
not room therefore for some sort of similar type of structure
in the regions to what we have in London? For instance, could
there be a Transport for the North East, a Transport for the West
Midlands, a Transport for Yorkshire and Humberside?
Cllr Sparks: It is an extremely
live issue now in relation to city regions. I am also from the
West Midlands, as you know, David, but I am not a politician.
As far as I am concerned one of the tasks of the developing city
region in the West Midlands will be to try and make sure that
transport is at the very centre of the whole project in terms
of a city region, not just because of questions of congestion
and movement but because it is absolutely essential.
Q64 Chairman: I am going to cheat
a bit. Mr Clelland did ask you not just about city regions because
within the north east that would not be a region; he asked you
about a regional authority.
Cllr Sparks: I will give you an
LGA answer then. The LGA answer is that the LGA does not have
a policy in relation to regions and it would depend on the local
circumstances as to what machinery would be adopted. It so happens
that in the West Midlands it would be a subregional one based
on a city region.
Chairman: We have the city region bits.
Some of us who are not part of them are getting a bit worried
about these city states.
Q65 Mrs Ellman: How have the continual
changes the department has made on the Local Transport Plan process
affected local work? Have they created big problems?
Mr Page: I am sorry, I did not
catch all of that.
Q66 Mrs Ellman: The Department has
made continual changes to the local transport plan process. Has
that affected the working of them?
Mr Page: Not so much at elected
member level but I think that it has had a major impact amongst
officers, yes, so it is perhaps one more for the societies. Coming
from an authority that has been regularly ranked, outside London,
in the top three of LTPs, we have taken advantage of unitary status
to plough our own furrow, and that means that there has been a
considerable amount of local leadership and we have therefore
used the guidance as best we can to mould it to our local priorities,
but I know for other local authorities who are more reactive in
the way that they deal with these things it has caused problems.
Mr Donaldson: I think what is
perhaps of more concern is the timeliness of the advice that accompanies
those changes and that has been reflected in the comments that
have been passed to me. In the past it has been felt that certain
advice has come late in the process and caused difficulties for
a number of authorities.
Q67 Chairman: So it is not just the
timing and the change, it is the fact that the advice on the changed
circumstance is not given to officers until much later down the
scale; is that it?
Mr Donaldson: Yes in certain cases
the detail is not provided sufficiently early in the process and
that causes problems. Often I would suggest the intention to change
is signalled and we are aware of that, but the detailed advice
may be some way further down the line, and I believe that that
happened both under LTP1 and LTP2.
Q68 Mrs Ellman: This is to the LGA:
why do you believe that some local authorities will have great
difficulties in funding local transport plans? What is the particular
reason?
Mr Page: It links to one of the
questions you had in the previous session about the Lyons Review
which is a much broader issue than local government finance. We
have a capricious capping regime which has been applied as arbitrarily
as previous governments have applied it and that does present
major problems to local authorities, particularly on the revenue
side of our activities, and even if there is a will to spend extra
revenue on, for example, concessionary fares or using fully our
prudential powers, we may well find that simply within the current
capping regime that is precluded. That is a major problem, and
I hope very much the Lyons Review, and indeed the LGA hopes very
much that the Lyons Review will come up with recommendations for
additional sources of funding. We certainly very much agree with
the comment Neil Scales made at the end of the previous session.
Q69 Mrs Ellman: Are there any other
recommendations you would like the Lyons Review to come up with
in relation to the funding of transport?
Mr Page: Certainly we will be
presenting some very shortly and it might be more appropriate
for David to say something about the work that we have currently
commissioned.
Mr Sparks: The situation on this
one is that we have been in discussions with the government for
several years now to try and move this whole question of local
authority finance forward. This is before Michael Lyons was given
the job to review it. One of the things that we particularly focused
on is to try and ensure that where there is gain from development
that the gain from development goes into transport infrastructure
amongst other things. The Government have focused on the Planning
Gain Supplement as a means of doing this. We have got queries
about that, but our involvement initially in that exercise was
not to just focus on one particular solution; it was to try and
make sure that we looked at different solutions. The fundamental
point, as you are more than aware since you were the leader of
Lancashire County Council, is that local authorities are far more
restricted now in terms of the amount of leeway they have to raise
finance. If you are talking about, for example, climate change,
we have flagged up with the Government that there is insufficient
money allocated in the Comprehensive Spending Review for that
block of expenditure which deals with that particular item. I
would suggest that we give you a paper on this because there are
an awful lot of dimensions to it. One final point: we have commissioned
Tony Travers to have a look at producing a new paper on transport
to try and move the current sterile debate that we have had in
terms of deregulation or reregulation, or whatever, to go beyond
the past arguments. To answer the point earlier on about London,
we want outside of London the benefits that London has got whilst
recognising that the conditions outside of London are different,
and that we need to take into account local circumstances. We
acknowledge that Crewe might be different from Stoke-on-Trent.
Q70 Chairman: Crewe is the centre
of the world, Mr Sparks, that is the only thing you need to acknowledge!
Mr Sparks: I will not disagree,
not today anyway! That is the whole point. It does not matter
whether you are talking about regions or sub-regions, our business
is helping the locality and local communities.
Chairman: You have now started Mr Efford.
Mr Efford wants to come in on this.
Q71 Clive Efford: Frequently I hear
people from outside London say that they look longingly on the
powers that London has and wish they had them. What specifically
are you talking about?
Mr Page: We are talking about—
Q72 Chairman: Very briefly, Mr Page,
we have not got 40 minutes for an exposition on local government
financing.
Mr Page: I was not so much talking
about finance, Chairman, it is to do with powers. It is really
something that you will also be addressing in your subsequent
inquiry on bus regulation. It is the ability to be able to specify
networks, frequencies and fares and integrate in a way that achieves
objectives connecting with trains and other forms of public transport
in a way that we do not have outside London. We have a commercially
led system outside of London with perhaps 15% tendered services
which we can control. The rest is determined by the bus operators.
Fares, frequencies and networks are all outside of our control.
We need to be able to either control or heavily influence those
in a way that the Mayor and TfL can.
Q73 Clive Efford: Is that the fault
of the private sector or is that the fault of the passenger transport
executives? For instance, if I were to point to Brighton, they
have been extremely successful in developing quite an extensive
network of improving their bus services in partnership, without
those powers.
Mr Page: These are historic examples
where they have always had good performance, I would suggest.
I would challenge anybody to show me an example outside London
in deregulated Britain where they have gone from having poor transport
provision 20 years ago to having excellent public transport provision
now. Brighton has always had very good public transport provision.
Reading, where I was chairman for 20 years of a bus company which
was municipally owned, it has always had good public transport,
so we have survived in spite of not because of deregulation.
Q74 Clive Efford: Those powers that
you do have such as workplace levies or congestion charging you
have not used. Why is that?
Mr Page: In short, because we
cannot recycle the benefits in the way that London can. If we
were to impose a congestion charge that resulted in a modal shift
to public transport, how would we under the present legal regime
be able to get a penny of the profits? At the moment the Mayor
takes the proceeds from public transport. It is subsidised, I
accept, but the fact is outside of London all the money would
go to the bus operators, and unless they agreed to pass some over
we would not be able to get any and what is more we would still
have no control over the bus networks, frequencies or fares.
Q75 Clive Efford: Is "we"
Reading or the LGA?
Mr Page: "We" is the
LGA in this sense. I speak very much for Conservative councillors
as well.
Chairman: You made that point. Mr Scott?
Q76 Mr Scott: A question to the LGA
and TAG: do you welcome the move to 100% grant funding for major
schemes and what impact will this have in practice?
Mr Donaldson: Yes of course we
must welcome that. However, I do not think that is the main problem
or the main issue for authority-commissioned schemes. As was mentioned
in previous evidence, it is the timeliness in terms of the decision
and the risk. The scale of funds involved can be quite significant.
In Sunderland, for example, there are two schemes in the decision
process. One is in the order of £13 million and the development
costs to date are of the order of £850,000. The more recent
scheme, which is seen as key to regeneration and would involve
a new bridge crossing of the River Wear, estimated at around £67
million has incurred costs and development costs to date in the
order of £2 million. These are significant sums and present
a significant burden to the authority, at great risk. The costs
are incurred by virtue of the level of information that is required
to be submitted at an early stage before the promoter really has
much idea whether he is likely to be successful.
Mr Scott: How appropriate are the "supported
borrowing improvements"? What part do they play in enabling
the local transport plan to be delivered?
Q77 Chairman: Somebody have a go.
Mr Sparks: The situation on that
one is that it goes back to the point made earlier on. The financial
situation that faces many local authorities is such that they
cannot take advantage of extra schemes to invest in transport.
It is as simple as that. Until there is a fundamental review of
local government finance and local government powers and essentially
the freedom of local authorities to, quite frankly, get on with
it, you are always going to have a problem.
Mr Donaldson: I think the movement
towards full grant support as opposed to borrowing would also
be of assistance to local transport schemes.
Q78 Mr Clelland: I assume that the
LGA and TAG would argue that the £5 million threshold is
too restrictive in terms of major schemes, so at what level do
you think it ought to be set?
Mr Page: I cannot remember but
it is many years since it was fixed so I would have thought at
least double that, considerably more, but that is a personal view.
Chairman: Any advance on £10 million?
Q79 Mr Clelland: There is no methodology
behind that?
Mr Page: No, it was an arbitrary
figure then and it remains an arbitrary figure.
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