Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
DR ANDY
SOUTHERN, MR
JONATHAN SPEAR,
MR BRIAN
WITTEN AND
MR PETER
CARDEN
24 MAY 2006
Q120 Chairman: You think it is more
likely to be because there is more than one authority involved?
Mr Witten: I am speculating on
that but in my experience it is possible to actually deliver within
a reasonable length of time, including the consultation process.
Q121 Chairman: What would you say
would be a reasonable time from the beginning of the consultation
to the delivery of a bus lane?
Mr Witten: That depends very much
on extent and many other factors. In one scheme in which I have
been involved we did substantially deliver quite a large package
of public transport improvements over a two-year period.
Q122 Mr Goodwill: Just on that, do
you have any observations about whether these are genuine public
consultations or merely an opportunity for some political debate
which maybe could have gone on in the council chamber, or maybe
the usual suspects from the environmental and other interest groups
just to get pitched in? Do the public really feel that they have
been consulted?
Mr Witten: I think in general
that the public consultation can be quite good. It is sometimes
difficult to engage members of the public, they just say, "Do
something tomorrow, please." I think that the authorities
are actually getting better at the consultation process and engaging
more different stakeholders to actually get a genuine feeling
on consultation and a genuine result at the end of the day.
Q123 Mr Goodwill: So it is not just
a case that they have made up their minds what they want to do
and they can rubberstamp it by going through a consultation? They
do actually change things because of the consultation?
Mr Witten: Indeed, very much so,
yes.
Q124 Mr Clelland: If, as was suggested,
crossing local authority boundaries sometimes causes a problem
with delays, would it be better if there was a bigger authority
network for delivering bus lanes and things which cross boundaries?
Mr Witten: That was speculation
on my part on the case that was being quoted to me, and local
authorities can indeed work well together in certain circumstances.
Where there are political differences obviously that can cause
delays.
Q125 Chairman: Mr Carden on this.
Mr Carden: There are examples
in the large conurbations where authorities do get together to
resolve and assist and can formulate conurbation-wide plans for
bus corridors very effectively. Going back to the point on consultation,
often the delay comes in when the secondary consequences of a
piece of infrastructure have not been completely thought through.
So putting in a bus lane may be quite easy but replacing residential
parking may be much more difficult.
Q126 Mrs Ellman: What would you say
are the main barriers to meeting targets set out in the Local
Plans?
Mr Witten: Certainly political
barriers in overcoming those, and particular types of schemes.
For example, rail has been very difficult to deliver because of
financial issues, withdrawal of rail passenger partnership funding
and so on, and engagement with the strategic rail authority. So
I would say that rail in particular has been difficult to deliver.
Chairman: I am sorry, Dr Southern, you
will have to keep it for 10 minutes. The Committee is suspended
for 10 minutes.
The Committee suspended from 3.02 pm to
3.13 pm for a division in the House
Q127 Chairman: Dr Southern, you were
just about to say something.
Dr Southern: I was going to add
to the question about the barriers to delivery and say that there
are a number of barriers that have been identified from the research
we have done with local authorities, which include the lack of
revenue funding, both through implementation and also from maintaining
capital schemes once they have been built—bus stations,
for example. One of the big problems certainly in the early stages
of LTP1 was the scarcity of skilled resources and with the wrapping-up
of the funding it was difficult to find the right skills.
Q128 Chairman: Is that in local authority
terms? You are not suggesting that the firms that put in for the
work were lacking in expertise?
Dr Southern: No.
Q129 Chairman: But the officers needed
to monitor and respond, is that what you are saying?
Dr Southern: Yes. I think that
local authorities have more constraints over their ability to
recruit and gearing up for the increased spend. I think there
were barriers on dealing with the bus issues associated with deregulated
bus environments and how they engaged with commercial bus operators
to deliver some improvements. Then perhaps linked to that is the
increase in tender costs, but also genuine cost inflation as well
proved to be a barrier.
Q130 Chairman: What impact did the
use of external consultants have on delivering costs? You must
be the right person to answer that.
Dr Southern: Sure. I think that
the models for involving the private sector in delivering Local
Transport Plans varies from one authority to another.
Q131 Chairman: That is a very diplomatic
response. So if there are staffing problems in local transport
departments what do you really need to do to give greater continuity
in the delivery of Local Transport Plans?
Dr Southern: I think there are
methods for ensuring partnership arrangements between local authorities
and the private sector, and I think those work better now than
five years ago. I think there has been quite a lot of emphasis
on trying to bring more professional people into the industry
and training. The Department for Transport itself has funded the
Transport Planning Skills Initiative, as an example. There is
a wider array of skills being brought into the profession.
Graham Stringer: If I can refer to the
Working with Weaker Local Authorities Report that you have produced.
You say, "At least five of the authorities are critical of
the advice provided by government officers... We are unable to
comment on this but suggest this concern is indicative of the
local authorities paying insufficient attention to the guidance
and, hence, not grasping a detailed understanding of what was
required."
Chairman: Could you tell us the page
and the paragraph?
Q132 Graham Stringer: It is M6, page
3-5, at the bottom of the page, the first paragraph on that page.
Why do you come to that conclusion?
Dr Southern: I am sorry, the conclusion
that local authorities are not understanding what is required
of them?
Q133 Graham Stringer: It is a perplexing
sentence. You say that you are unable to comment on it and then
you say that probably it is local authorities paying insufficient
attention to the guidance. Why do you say that?
Dr Southern: Because we are drawing
on the evidence of working with those local authorities to address
their shortcomings, why they are classified as weak, and understanding
or getting a perspective of their understanding of the guidance
and what they needed to do to better understand that guidance.
Also it is from talking to the Government Office representatives
who are involved in that process. We felt that there had been
a relatively high level engagement with the respective authorities
concerned.
Q134 Graham Stringer: Could it not
just be that they disagreed that the Government Office advice
was appropriate to what they wanted to do?
Dr Southern: It could be. I think
in most, but not all, situations the local authorities in submitting
their Annual Progress Reports wanted to get the endorsement of
Government Office, given that it has an impact on their rating.
So they are unlikely to deliberately go against the Government
Office advice.
Graham Stringer: That is an interesting
answer. If we move to Local Transport Plans Policy Evaluation
in Part 1, Final Report, 2003.
Chairman: That is the Atkins report.
Q135 Graham Stringer: That is page
13, Integration (Chapter 7). You say, "The case studies,
our review of LTPs and Government Office LTP assessments show
a good level of consistency with national policies. However, in
many cases this is due to the prescription of the LTP Guidance
rather than the aspirations of local Members, who may see electoral
advantage in appealing more to car users and whose rhetoric may
be at odds with the principles set out in the LTP." The point
I am trying to get you to comment on really is that in your reports
you are saying that local authorities are not doing very well,
but I have the reports carefully and it seems to be that you are
saying that they disagree with some of the government guidance,
and you do not really distinguish where there is a policy difference
from the elected Members there from what the government wants.
Mr Spear: Firstly I would query
the point about we are saying that the authorities are not doing
very well. I think given the difficulties of the process I think
very good progress has been made.
Q136 Graham Stringer: Could I just
be clear? It is particularly in the first report where you are
talking about failing local authorities, weaker local authorities,
so they clearly, in your terms, were not doing very well, and
this is saying here that it is really code for saying that there
is a disagreement, that local Members actually do not agree with
the national objectives.
Mr Spear: I think what we are
saying is that there is certainly a tension between the objectives
and the criteria which may be set out in the first Local Transport
Plan and the decisions that Members may make on a more day-to-day
basis in terms of the particular programmes and schemes which
are being delivered, which are more on a scheme basis rather than
a high level strategy basis. I would argue that that is part and
parcel of any process that gives more decision-making powers back
to the local Members compared to the TPPs where it was ministers
who were effectively making the investment decisions. We now have
the process under LTPs where actually local Members and local
authorities themselves have more discretion to make decisions.
Inevitably that is going to lead to more tension between the Members
at local level and ministers at DfT level.
Q137 Graham Stringer: That is really
the point, is it not? What I get from reading these reports is
that while the Local Transport Plans should be just that, that
actually there is some resistance to those Local Transport Plans,
and if there is a resistance—the way I read the reports
that you have written—is that authorities do not get the
money. So that there is an appearance of local decision-making
but you say that when local Members do not like it they see electoral
advantage. That is probably what they are there for, to represent
the opinions of local people. It is a very odd way of describing
what local people want to do. You do not think that that distorts
the whole process?
Mr Spear: I would agree that it
is a balancing act between reflecting the national transport priorities
and reflecting the local transport priorities where they may not
be identical.
Q138 Graham Stringer: If I can ask
two or three more questions? Would you take that to the point
that actually at the end of this process the national priorities
are squashing the local priorities? That the national priorities
are winning because you do not get funding if you do not do what
the national priorities say?
Mr Spear: I would not put it as
starkly as that. If you look at the current Share Priorities—congestion,
accessibility, road safety and air quality—a lot of this
is motherhood and apple pie stuff, it is not things that local
Members or Ministers would necessarily disagree about. There are
some areas—and I would probably focus particularly on economic
regeneration and the sustainable communities agenda—where
there is probably more of a gap between the local level and the
national level and how that Agenda was taken forward. So, yes,
there are tensions, there are differences in interpretation but
I would not necessarily say that the two are mutually exclusive.
Q139 Graham Stringer: That brings
me neatly to the next point because you are rather scathing—and
I can go to the reference—about the relationship with the
Regional Development Agencies and you almost dismiss them and
say that they are only interested in economic regeneration and
their policies do not fit into the transport policies somehow,
so the RDAs have got it wrong with being interested in creating
jobs.
Dr Southern: I do not think we
are saying that the RDAs have got it wrong; I think they are seeking
to deliver on different objectives. As I understand, there is
no PSA target for the Department for Transport which is related
to economic regeneration directly.
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