Written evidence from Somerset County
Council (BUS 135)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Somerset County Council faces a Budget deficit
of £75 million over the next three years. One area of savings
identified was a reduction in financial support for local bus
services. The reduction agreed by Councillors was £2.4 million
out of an annual budget of £5.2 million. Reductions to bus
services and in particular evening and Sunday Services were discussed
in Cabinet and Full Council meetings at which members of the public
and transport user groups were present. The decision to withdraw
funding from Evening and Sunday bus services initially was taken
to protect the funding of daytime bus services for as long as
possible. A significant proportion of evening and Sunday bus services
have been taken on commercially by bus operators. A further cut
of £1.4 million is required over the next two financial years
and measures are already being put in place to consult more widely
and allow more time for public comments and suggestions.
2. Somerset County Council has a gap between
income and expenditure of £75 million over the next three
years. These financial pressures have come about due to three
main factors: the Government's announcement reducing our income,
the huge pressure we face from a growing elderly and vulnerable
population and the expense that brings and, locally, from the
level of debt we are carrying at Somerset County Council.
3. As a result of this financial situation Councillors
have been forced to make decisions to reduce expenditure across
a range of services provided by the Authority and one area where
funding reductions were identified was in our support for local
public bus services.
4. Our budget for local bus services for 2010-11
stood at £5.2 million. Due to the rural nature of the County
the vast majority of bus services in Somerset receive some level
of direct financial support from us. This funding provides a wide
range of services across the county from Market Day routes, School
and College Day services, Evening and Sunday services, regular
daytime services and a Park & Ride scheme in Taunton. The
scale of the reduction in funding for local bus services identified
was £2.4 million over a three year period which represents
a very significant reduction in this budget.
5. Some months before any changes were made;
information was made available in a general sense indicating that
financial support for all Evening and Sunday bus services was
under threat. These proposals were discussed in both Cabinet and
Full Council meetings which were attended by members of the public
and representatives of user groups such as the Campaign for Better
Transport and Passengers Focus and widely reported in the local
press.
6. The withdrawal of funding for Evening and
Sunday bus services along with a very small number of poorly supported
daytime services enabled us to reach our initial savings target
of just under £1 million for the first year of our funding
reductions. The thinking behind the focus on Evening and Sunday
services was two-fold. Firstly our belief that we should continue
to protect daytime services for as long as possible in order to
facilitate transport for the majority of residents travelling
to work, education, medical appointments and social activities.
Secondly, our records suggested that within our funding for these
services there were significant elements of the timetables that
could be operated commercially and therefore we believed that
the market would best identify those services during the evening
and Sundays that were sustainable.
This view has been borne out by the commercial registration
of a significant proportion of the services we withdrew funding
for.
7. We did consider continuing funding some evening
and Sunday services and withdrawing more daytime services in the
first year. But if we had pursued this course of action we would
have offered support for the most popular of these services whereas
as it has turned out these have been re-instated commercially
allow us to save funding which will enable us to protect more
daytime services in the future.
8. As we continue to address our funding deficit
further reductions totalling £1.4 million are planned for
our local bus service funding in the next two financial years.
Knowing the scale of the funding reductions we now have to make
will allow us to move forward much earlier with proposals for
reductions in the next two financial years. We have already arranged
to hold an additional Public Transport Forum meeting at County
Hall in Taunton in early July. This will allow us to begin to
formulate our plans by taking comments and observations from user
groups, operators and members of the public before drawing up
and publishing our proposals for further reductions later in the
year giving considerably more time for consultation and comment
from the wider public before final decisions are taken on the
reductions for the 2012-13 financial year.
April 2011
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