A report was submitted which gave details of a
refreshed approach to the Bus Partnerships, which was subject to
agreement by all parties in the Partnerships.
Members were reminded that there was a Bus
Partnership in each of the four local authorities. The governance meetings for Bus Partnerships were
typically Quarterly Steering Groups and Monthly Operations Groups
and were attended by Operators, local authority senior officers and
SYPTE senior officers.
The challenges were considered to be:
- The shared interest of the parties
involved had eroded over time.
- Mutual benefits were now more
complex to achieve due to conflicting policy decisions, greater
investment levels needed, greater risks and lower risk
appetite.
- Poor record of attendance from lead
officers due to conflicting demands on time.
- A route to greater engagement and
accountability would be for the Bus Partnerships to link through
into formal governance forums, such as the Transport and
Environment Board.
It was felt that the Partnerships needed to be
reinvigorated by creating a new shared purpose which each party
would support.
Opportunities for
shared focus areas were suggested as:
- Engagement on Bus Review
developments.
- Strategies that supported the
long-term sustainability of the bus service provision (linked to
Covid-19 recovery).
- Greater engagement on service
design, maximising leverage over network design (e.g. trade bus
lanes for service retention), facilitate true consultation.
- Support prioritisation of capital
programmes.
- Support pricing strategies.
- Create a single Steering Group
meeting across all four local authorities, although maintain
separate Operations Group meetings for each of the four districts,
to recognise time availability constraints from attendees, with a
more strategic remit that was clearly distinct from the Operations
Group.
- Encourage closer engagement by
linking the Steering Group into the Transport and Environment
Board, via the Bus Improvement Board.
- Two-way feed into the Bus
Improvement Board (feed out: data
support, feed in: Bus Review progress update.
Whilst broadly supportive of the proposals for
a region-wide group, the Board felt strongly that there was a need
for arrangements in each local authority to discuss specific local
issues and suggested further discussions to look at a hybrid model
to encompass this.
RESOLVED – That a decision be deferred
pending further discussions on a hybrid model and a future short
report be presented to the Board.