Written evidence from Lancashire County
Council (BUS 51)
I refer to the inquiry that the Transport Committee
is to undertake into the funding of bus services in England (outside
of London) in the light of the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending
Review. I set out below the position with regards to public transport
in Lancashire and would be grateful if you could give the following
comments some consideration.
Lancashire County Council boasts a bus network which
is 80% commercially operated by bus operators with the remaining
20% of the network being provided by subsidised bus services.
Net funding for subsidised bus services in 2009-10
in Lancashire was £6.5 million and this mainly provided rural,
evening and weekend services across the County. These are services
that are deemed socially necessary and which the bus operators
are unable to provide on a commercial basis. In addition to this,
we also fund other passenger transport services, namely community
transport, home to school transport, SEN and Adult Services transport
with a total spend in the region of £32 million per annum.
However, there are other significant funding streams
to operators which in the main are not targeted towards particular
areas but is "blanket" funding provided to the bus industry.
In Lancashire, according to the most recent DfT figures, £9.8
million in funding was provided to the bus industry through the
Bus Services Operators Grant (BSOG). Whilst this grant is due
to decrease in the coming years as a result of the Comprehensive
Spending Review, it is still set to remain a significant source
of bus industry funding. The previous government had announced
their intention to move towards a payment based on an incentive
per passenger (IPP), but this would still leave this funding as
an uncapped and untargeted funding stream. There are also concerns
that IPP has the potential for moving resources from rural to
more urban operation.
The other main area of bus service funding within
Lancashire is that of the concessionary fares scheme with a total
£23.9 million per annum being spent on the provision of the
scheme. Again, there are changes proposed to the system but much
of the funding will still remain poorly targeted.
A recent report by the Local Government Association,
titled "The Future of Bus Subsidy" proposes replacing
the whole subsidy package with a single stream of public subsidy
for bus services. The stream, it proposes, should be devolved
to local transport authorities who would be empowered to commission
bus services from providers at local level through a competitive
tendering regime thus maintaining competition for bus service
operation but through a substantially increased targeted formula.
Under such an arrangement genuinely commercial bus
services would not receive flat rate subsidy and local authorities
would be able to choose to subsidise a single service over routes
which currently receive multiple subsidy streams for numerous
providers.
Adopting such an approach in Lancashire would allow
us to specify subsidised route coverage in order to support local
economic, social and environmental objectives. It would also allow
us to integrate school, social care and accessible transport with
mainstream public transport and have the potential to make efficiencies
through better procurement.
We would be very keen to develop a pilot scheme within
Lancashire based on the above as we would be interested in procuring
bus services utilising the Government's BSOG subsidy joined with
our own subsidy for passenger services. Obviously, this would
require good effective partnership working with bus operators
and a new way of working but it is something that we feel there
is merit in pursuing.
January 2011
| 
