Issue - meetings

Bus Partnerships – Future Approach

Meeting: 07/01/2021 - MCA - Transport and the Environment Board (Item 10)

10 Stabilisation: Bus Parterships - Future Approach pdf icon PDF 169 KB

Minutes:

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.