Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-179)
DR ANDY
SOUTHERN, MR
JONATHAN SPEAR,
MR BRIAN
WITTEN AND
MR PETER
CARDEN
24 MAY 2006
Q160 Mrs Ellman: Has the Local Transport
Plan process given local authorities the flexibility that they
were seeking over the five-year period?
Mr Witten: I think there have
been some problems with flexibility and I believe that in the
introduction of LTP1 that flexibility was actually mentioned as
being an objective, but then when local authorities tried to flex
they found that that was actually frowned on. So, yes, I believe
that that has been a problem for local authorities during the
course of LTP1.
Q161 Mrs Ellman: What changes would
you like to see to make that flexibility a reality?
Mr Witten: I think there could
be a case for local authorities, especially groups of smaller
local authorities being able to share between them different stresses
in their programmes. So there are schemes that maybe fall underneath
the £5 million threshold for major schemes, but still have
quite lumpy expenditure profiles. It might be interesting to see
if local authorities would be interested to share their expenditure
between each other, to actually even out that lumpiness.
Q162 Mrs Ellman: If the Annual Progress
Reports were every two or three years what impact would that have
on funding allocations? Would it be a matter of concern? Does
anyone have a view?
Dr Southern: My view on that would
be that I would not have a major concern. I think there is a concern
which is separate from whether they produce their Annual Progress
Reports and their approach to monitoring. Monitoring what they
are doing should be used as a management tool and they should
be doing it anyway and adjusting their programme accordingly.
There is a danger that if they are just relying on reporting because
government asks them to report that it becomes a tick-box exercise
rather than being done as a useful management tool.
Mr Carden: If I could add to that?
I would have concern if it moved into to three years. If one got
into a situation where monitoring did not happen because there
was not a demand for it then three years would be too big a window.
I think one of the other key issues with monitoring is to introduce
the collection of data as part of the business delivery, so that
it is not an additional task, it is just part of local government
efficiency.
Q163 Mrs Ellman: What proportion
of authorities registered as weak and needing assistance in preparation
of local plans have actually improved?
Mr Spear: It is a relatively small
number and it has been decreasing over the last three years. I
think last year it was about four out of 85.
Mrs Ellman: Four out of 85?
Q164 Chairman: The 85 were the weaker
groupings, is that what you are saying?
Mr Spear: No, there were 85 LTPs
in round one, and four in APR5—the last APR—were classified
as weak by DfT.
Dr Southern: The year before that
it was eight and the year before that it was 10, but to take the
ones that were classified as weak within APR3, the 10, very few,
if any, were classified as weak in APR4.
Q165 Mrs Ellman: Akins have recommended
that those authorities should be helped by a mixture of sharing,
best practice and training. Was that taken up?
Mr Spear: There has been an ongoing
programme of contact between those in Government Offices and DfT,
but the details of that you will need to ask the Department.
Dr Southern: There is also a local
authority network now for sharing best practice as well, which
has been in existence probably no more than two years.
Q166 Mrs Ellman: What about the amount
of money spent on bid preparation? Can that be improved in any
way? Mott MacDonald, how do you view that?
Mr Witten: I think that the one
size fits all kind of advice on schemes is a bit difficult or
can prove difficult, and I think there could be a more targeted
approach where there is actually a variable scale of the amount
of effort required, depending on the nature and the extent of
the scheme.
Q167 Graham Stringer: On that point,
is it possible for you to make an estimate of how much waste there
is in the system, how much money local authorities spend in preparation
for schemes that do not happen or in terms of talking to central
government? How much inefficiency and waste is there in the system
attached to it?
Mr Witten: Unlike my colleagues,
or my competitors, WS Atkins, we have not done a national study
of local authorities so I cannot give an answer nationwide. But
I do know that some authorities put a lot of effort into preparing
submissions for major schemes and felt that they could have been
helped by better advice from DfT on the kind of scale, size and
amount of major schemes that it might be possible for them to
achieve. So I believe there has been some inefficiency there.
Q168 Graham Stringer: Can you give
us help in the schemes you have been involved in? Is it five,
ten, 15% of the total costs as reported?
Mr Witten: No, I could not give
an estimate.
Mr Carden: Just to come in on
that, I think it is very important that one looks at schemes which
do not go forward and decide whether that work is actually aborted.
It may well be that a local authority learns a great deal about
their transport process in taking a decision not go to forward
with the scheme, and so the work may not be entirely wasted, though
it may not go forward and get government funding.
Q169 Graham Stringer: Do Atkins have
a view?
Dr Southern: I would not be able
to quantify it but I would agree that certainly in some of the
major schemes I am aware that there has been a considerable amount
of work done over a considerable number of years in the preparation.
How much of that is aborted is impossible to say.
Q170 Chairman: What about post-scheme
evaluation? It is all very well saying, "We made this recommendation
and we do not know whether they actually did it or not,"
which is what you have said previous schemes, and then this business
on the schemes themselves. Has nobody asked you to look at the
actual impacts that were forecast?
Dr Southern: I understand that
certainly on major schemes and particularly light rail schemes
that have been implemented there have been detailed studies looking
at the impacts
Q171 Chairman: Do they support what
you have said? I would have thought one would have quoted someone
else who said, "Yes, that is right." Is that not the
case? Have you not had evidence that in fact your view is supported
by subsequent reports?
Dr Southern: I am sorry, a view
on what; I am not sure that I follow?
Q172 Chairman: To review the whole
question because after all you have made this point very specifically
on waste and on discontinuance of plans and now Mr Carden says
do not entirely use that as a negative because they may have learned
during the process of preparing the bid something that is subsequently
used. The Committee need to know. If there is a large amount of
work being done by local authorities, which has to be abandoned
for one reason or another, and is costing a lot of money, taking
a lot of time, what you are saying to us is that that should not
be allowed to continue, the Department needs to tighten up its
recommendations. What exactly is it you are saying? We are talking
big, big bucks here; we are talking large amounts of money. Are
the local authorities wasting their money and is it because they
are not given clear guidelines in the first place, or is this
a general view that you think there are too many schemes and too
many people putting in too many bids and they should be doing
something better like clearing the drains? I paraphrase.
Mr Witten: I think that DfT need
to engage more with the local authorities in terms of what is
realistic for local authorities to put forward.
Q173 Chairman: So you are actually
saying, Mr Witten, that local authorities should be told much
more precisely how likely they are to get something and not just
told to put in bids; is that what you are saying?
Mr Witten: Yes, given better advice
on the scale of funding that might be available and the kind of
scheme that might be funded.
Mr Goodwill: I know in my region in Yorkshire
that we have two schemes, the Scarborough Integrated Transport
Scheme, a £17 million scheme which was pulled two weeks before
they were due to cut the first sod and a lot of money went into
that, and the Leeds Super Tram which they spent squillions getting
ready for it and it was pulled fairly late. What is the hit rate
for these schemes? Are we talking 10%, 20%, 50%? How much money
is being wasted by local authorities in preparing these detailed
schemes only to be told right at the altar that they are being
jilted?
Q174 Chairman: Expensively jilted!
Come on gentlemen, you are the consultants, you know all the answers
otherwise you do not need to be paid!
Mr Witten: We have not done a
national study on that; we work with a number of local authorities
but by no means all.
Q175 Mr Goodwill: For example, how
many light rail schemes have been prepared and how many have been
allowed to go ahead?
Mr Carden: I do not know the answer
to that question. I think an issue here is that there are too
many large and very expensive schemes to prepare, which get jilted
at the last moment.
Q176 Chairman: I do not want to spend
too much time now. Atkins' report recommended that the Second
Edition Guidance should give greater emphasis to the importance
of revenue funding. Did the Department respond?
Mr Spear: We recommended the importance
of revenue funding and we also recognised that it was not purely
an issue for the Department for Transport.
Q177 Chairman: I am prepared to accept
the qualifications but did the Department respond? Did they act
on your recommendations?
Mr Spear: The Department's response
in the second Local Transport Plan Guidance was to give more emphasis
to revenue funding, supporting LTP objectives, which is an advance
on the first round guidance. The second issue is that DfT's argument
in that guidance is that it comes back to this joining up issue
and actually for local transport officers and departments to be
making the case within their authorities, to emphasise the importance
of transport and to meet corporate objectives and therefore provide
greater justification to members why the transport budget should
be maintained or even increased.
Q178 Chairman: So you are really
saying that that is the way in which you can ensure adequate revenue
funding for transport improvements?
Mr Spear: It is a way within an
authority if the revenue support grant and the local government
settlement to authorities remains the same.
Q179 Chairman: It has been suggested
that whole life costing and good asset management with strategic
transport planning is not helped by having separate capital and
revenue funding streams. Is that right?
Mr Spear: Personally that is not
a statement I would disagree with.
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