Environment Audit CommitteeSupplementary written evidence submitted by Cambridgeshire County Council

This paper provides two examples of accessibility focused projects that Cambridgeshire is implementing.

Cambridgeshire Future Transport

1.1 This is a joint initiative with partners from across Cambridgeshire including local authorities, health services, community groups and transport providers, working together to find solutions to Cambridgeshire’s transport and accessibility challenges. It aims to improve local transport provision to better meet local needs while at the same time reducing the amount of subsidised bus services.

1.2 The purpose of this programme is to identify practical, achievable and sustainable transport solutions through more effective, efficient and coordinated transport delivery mechanisms.

1.3 The programme is exploring new approaches that:

strengthen the connections between transport solutions and community outcomes;

enable the pooling of resources across boundaries where applicable;

provide a strategic framework to bring partners together;

stimulate opportunities to create new community joint ventures to operate as local delivery bodies;

engage more widely with other services to explore the potential to innovate and improve service accessibility in ways that reduce the need for journey; and

provide transport solutions that better meet communities’ needs at less cost than traditional bus subsidies.

2. Background

2.1 The background to this is that on 30th January 2012, the County Council committed to a three year phased programme of phasing out the £2.7 million used to subsidise bus services. Cabinet also approved the allocation of £1.5 million per annum funding for the Cambridgeshire Future Transport (CFT) project to support the provision of focused, alternative, more appropriate and better value-for-money transport solutions. The aim of the project is to work with local communities and service providers to invest this more targeted budget in providing transport solutions that better reflect the needs of the local areas.

2.2 The majority of subsidised services operate in the more rural areas of the county where passenger numbers are low or where the lengths of journey mean that operating costs are high, making the services unviable to operate commercially. On some of these services the level of subsidy required is very high in, one example it costs the authority £12 per person, per single trip. This does not represent good value for money, this project is therefore looking to work with the local communities to investigate alternative ways to provide transport which provides a solution to the transport need but is also cost effective. It is appreciated that these are also the areas where there is the greatest need for transport. For some, the subsidised service will be the lifeline that enables them to access services. For this reason a new transport solution must be in place before any subsidies are stopped.

2.3 In the early stages of the project, work was undertaken to look around the country to find examples of local transport solutions. Solutions will vary across the County and one size will not fit all. Solutions may include community operated schemes, smaller vehicles, demand responsive transport, links to commercial hubs, such as the Busway or Park and Ride as well as direct routes to certain destinations and the many variations in-between. The project aims to be creative and find innovative solutions to historic problems.

2.4 A key element of CFT is encouraging local communities and service providers including partners to become more involved in the process of designing and delivering transport, developing a culture of co-production. This moves away from the historic approach whereby subsidised services have been designed based on previous or existing provision. The first step is working with local communities to asses the transport need in their local area to then work with transport providers and the local authority to design transport solutions that best reflect the identified need. By encouraging community involvement throughout the process and broadening the reach to include potential passengers, as well as existing, the resulting transport will be more sustainable and appropriate.

3. Investing in Local transport Solutions

3.1 A first phase of this project is developing a programme working with local members and their communities along with transport providers to co-produce local transport solutions. This programme will integrate with bus subsidies withdrawal and will need to identify solutions that offer better value for money and better meet local needs. Some of the proposals coming out of this so far include

3.2 Co-producing a new service to better meet local needs; In Area B, a geographical area to the south of Cambridge, the working group worked on a number of local transport solutions eventually narrowing the options to two. Of these the one that gained support from the community and local parishes is a 1hr 15 min loop which feeds passengers into the Citi 7, Whittlesford rail station and the Park and Ride at Babraham. A tender process for the new service has now finished and it is anticipated that this service will begin to operate in March 2013.

3.3 Better integration One of the key areas being explored is how better integration can be achieved within the provision of statutory transport and the potential for budgets to be pooled both internally and externally with partners such as the NHS.As part of this work we are looking to enable the aligning of resources and priorities across organisational boundaries—Looking at pooling budgets both internally and externally and providing a framework to bring partners together.

3.4 One such example is working to deliver improved access to healthcare (Doddington Hospital) where there has been join up between the initial work within the CFT programme and the Fenland Area Community Transport and Access subgroup to deliver improved access to the local Hospital. The theory is to use a local community transport operator to run an hourly door-to-door dial-a-ride service that can be used by patients entitled to non-emergency transport help, but to also provide a service for non-entitled passengers and relatives/friends. This would then free up the ambulance service to concentrate on its core business of emergency or high risk non-emergency transport. The cost of this alternative provision could reduce the NHS funding by providing the service at a lower cost than the current ambulance service and the income to the community transport operator would hopefully make the service viable. If successful the model could then be rolled out to other areas where there are significant patient movements and a local community transport provider.

Fenland Area Approach

1. Introduction

This is a highly successful programme which is aimed at addressing accessibility issues in Fenland District, north Cambridgeshire.

2. The Challenge

Fenland district covers some 54,645 hectares of mostly agricultural land in Cambridgeshire. It is predominately rural and sparsely populated with services and facilities found within the market towns or within neighbouring districts.

There is a population of 94,200 (2010 ONS) with around three quarters living in the market towns. There are over 20,000 people living in villages or more sparsely populated settlements.

Around 20% of households within Fenland do not have access to a car.

Fenland has a higher population of people aged 65 and over (around 20%). At ward level, by assessing the number of older people, with the % of households without a car and the IMD access to services data, it has been possible to show that these issues are linked.

Traditional public transport is limited in many parts of Fenland with the predominant level of service being off peak from 9.30 am to 4pm.

There are also difficulties for children and young people to access services with limited or no public transport at evenings and weekends.

3. Addressing the challenge—Fenland DC Transport Approach

The Fenland Approach to the Access to Services Challenge has 5 key elements:

Partnership Working and Stakeholders Transport and Access Group—This is an important group that drives the project. This group works together to align interests and reduce duplication to find solutions to resolve transport issues more quickly.. Its membership includes local authorities, public and community transport providers NHS and voluntary groups. Links with Town and Parish Councils are also very important.

Evidence Gathering & Data—A significant barrier to addressing access to services issues is a lack of evidence and information. Eg Access to healthcare is an issue; however there is a need to scope what the specific issues are and the scale of the problem. Accessibility issues are also different within each settlement and as such it’s important to have an understanding of how each place works. Data and evidence was gathered and a review undertaken to highlight gaps and where further work was needed.

TAG Work Programme—Subsequent to the review, a focussed work programme has been developed and agreed by all partners. The Fenland District TAG has 4 work areas—Children and young people, Healthcare and older people, Transport infrastructure and community rail.

Access to Information—Promotion & Publicity—the provision of transport services are supported by ongoing promotion and publicity. A change in a person’s circumstance can mean that they need information at short notice that they have not needed before. Transport services are also subject to change. Information must also be available in places where people can find it such as GP Surgeries, Libraries or the Post Office.

Policy Development & Approach—It is clear that no one size fits all approach was going to address access issues in Fenland. The nature of the District is so varied that a policy approach was needed which would be flexible enough to address the full range of needs. The most critical requirement overall is that people can meet their daily needs without access to a car. A policy approach has therefore been developed using three tiers, which are as follows:

Public Transport—traditional bus and rail services

Dial-A-Ride—Semi scheduled minibus services that collect people from their homes, meeting the needs of people who cannot access public transport or who do not have any public transport services

Community Car Schemes—these are schemes established by Care Network, a Cambridgeshire Charity concerned with ensuring that older people can maintain independent living. Community Car Schemes are run by volunteer drivers and are completely flexible catering for individual specific journeys.

Market Town Transport Strategies—joint strategies for each market town that include programmes of improvements for walker, cyclists and public transport users. Typical each strategy will be a programme of improvements for 5—10 years. Schemes are generally funded through the Local Transport Plan also S106 from developments. Fenland has MTTS for March and Wisbech with a Chatteris Strategy due to be adopted in June 2010

4. Implementation and Outcomes

Policy & Project Implementation—Access to services

An initial starting point was to recognise the inconsistency in the level of transport available across the whole of Fenland. Some significant gaps were identified including access to information and the cost of travel.

The Transport and Access Group has implemented a varied work programme including evidence base research, large programmes of marketing and advertising transport services and working with local communities and stakeholders to improve services. Further details are provided in table 1 below which sets out the main projects and the reasons why they were considered as solutions.

The outcomes of all the above work are as follows:

An effective Transport and Access Group which includes all key partners, is effective as a champion of local transport and is focused on the delivery of improvements now and in the future. This ensures that transport improvements are made more quickly.

There is one approach to the delivery of public and community transport at the local level in Fenland. This enables improvements to be made quickly and more easily.

Greater awareness of the public and community transport available in Fenland across the whole community. This is leading to greater use of the services.

A targeted approach to delivering new and improved public and community transport which meets local need.

Local people are seeing transport improvements that they requested.

Significantly higher levels of use of public and community transport.

TABLE 1—IMPLEMENTING SOLUTIONS

Solution/Project	Year	Reason for Solutions	Comments
Map Based Research Linking different GIS layers such as bus routes and the location of bus stops with the location of Concessionary Bus Pass Holder postcodes. This assesses whether bus users live near bus stops and services.	2007—ongoing	There is a need for evidence showing where bus services travel, where the infrastructure is located and where people live. Many people did not live near a stop.	Promotion of local bus services, FACT Dial A Ride services and bus stop infrastructure made residents aware of the transport available.
Use of Map Based Research to improve bus stop infrastructure and locations Using the evidence, FDC & CCC discussed with the town councils and local bus companies the best locations for new bus stop infrastructure.	2007—ongoing	There are over 2,000 unmarked bus stops in Cambridgeshire.	There is a bus stop with infrastructure now located within 400m of most of the homes in the 4 Fenland market towns.
Fenland Transport Directory By mapping bus stop infrastructure that was already in Fenland, FDC and CCC were able to discuss with the town councils and the local bus companies the best places to place future infrastructure	2011—ongoing	There is a need to provide information about all types of public transport in one place. This avoids confusion and helps to	The directories are available in the One Stop Shops, Libraries, GP Surgeries; health care groups are providing them to their members.
Getting from A to B Case Studies Part of an initial series of 6—aimed at giving real life scenarios on a variety of transport related issues. The aim is to assist people to make better transport choices to meet their needs.	2011—ongoing	Local residents, particularly people with more complex needs did not know what transport options were available for accessing hospitals, shopping, education etc. Health and social care workers are also now always aware.	Access to hospital booklets are now in development.
Patient Transport Questionnaire and Access to Healthcare Research The results of the questionnaires, along with site visits and survey days. Map based results together with an action plan to address the issues.	2011—ongoing	Access to Healthcare is a big issue in Fenland due to its rural nature. Research was needed to understand the difficulties people face accessing healthcare.	Around 1,500 people completed a questionnaire in the GP surgeries or the hospitals in Fenland.
Disseminating transport information & policy Promote the three tiers of transport on FDC Website, One Stop Shops and local newspapers. Work with operators of public and community transport including developing new community transport leaflets.	2009—ongoing	Local residents were providing feedback suggesting they did not know what transport was available. The original DAR leaflets were outdated and needed a new image to attract new customers, especially younger people. This promotion and publicity has to be sustained over time and cannot be a one off exercise.	DAR passenger figures continue to increase month on month. All DAR and Community Car Scheme details are available to download on FDC website along with copies in printed format.
Public Transport Operators—in partnership with the TAG we established meetings with operators to discuss Parish Plan actions and develop extensions or changes to bus services.	2007—ongoing	There was a need to better integrate the Parish Plan process with organisations that deliver public transport. Allows the Town and Parish Councils more opportunity to assist with improving transport services.	We have been able to address known and future gaps in the transport network more easily.
Concessionary Fares (DAR)—the scheme was extended in 2008 with a local add on to include Dial A Ride services. CCC and FDC now cover the cost of dial a ride services for local residents	2008—ongoing	Residents with a very limited or no bus services were severely disadvantaged by the national scheme if they did not have a bus service. With a large elderly population where people cannot use public transport DAR is often their only option	Many comments have been made by residents that the DAR service is a lifeline to them. The con fares scheme allows them to make more journeys that improve their quality of life.
Concessionary Fares (Rail)—Discounted senior railcards. In partnership with the other Cambs districts Fenland residents can purchase senior railcards at a rate below the price they can be obtained at railway stations.	2006—ongoing	By purchasing the cards in bulk with the other districts we able to help local residents make costs savings.	Around 700 discounted senior rail cards are issued through FDC each year.
Dial A Ride Services—work with operators to introduce a revised DAR timetable. This includes 4 routes across Fenland There are 3 services each way per day Monday to Saturday for 3 DAR routes. The 4 route has one journey each way per day. New weekly and monthly services are also added.	2007—ongoing New 4th route 2009.	New timetables were needed to meet demand and also due to bus service changes and withdrawals. FDC worked with operators to develop questionnaires for current users as supporting evidence.	These questionnaires helped FACT to put on services to places that people wanted to travel to. Doing this made sure that services are well used.
Assist Community Transport operators—helping operators to develop their business plans, marketing plans and approaches, including a Councillor being elected to their board	2007—ongoing	There is a need to sustain Community Transport services both now and in the future. There is a need for better use of existing minibuses to meet local needs. New and improved links have been made with healthcare providers as well as developing a better understanding of wider transport links.
Rail Strategy & Community Rail Partnership Development of a rail strategy including policy issues, a Stations Investment Plan and proposals for a Community Rail Partnership. Delivery of a Community Rail Partnership (CRP) to support local community involvement in the railways	2009—ongoing	Fenland has 3 rail stations in the district, with various levels of services and facilities. There is strong local support for rail in Fenland but people want to see improvements to services and stations. They also want a greater voice for improvements.	The Rail Strategy was adopted by FDC Cabinet in April 2012. Some of the proposals have been included in the Market Town Transport Strategies. Station Master plans are in development.

28 February 2013