Community Transport Debate

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Department: Department for Transport
Wednesday 16th December 2015

(8 years, 4 months ago)

Westminster Hall
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Nigel Mills Portrait Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Nuttall. I join other Members in congratulating my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) on securing this important debate, which is timely: community transport services in Derbyshire are under great threat.

I start, as other Members did, by paying tribute to the work of the employees and volunteers in my local community transport provider, which used to be called Amber Valley Community Transport but now has the catchy name of Community Transport for Town and County—or CT4TC for short, which is a little harder to remember. It has initiatives similar to those that the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Dr Monaghan) spoke about, in terms of trying to be more efficient and developing partnerships. It now covers not only Amber Valley but north-east Derbyshire and Chesterfield, and even provides a newish service in Bassetlaw, crossing the county boundary—we are getting into quite radical territory there, by bridging the divide between Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

I do not think anyone could doubt the great importance and value of the service that CT4TC provides, or the value for money for the taxpayer. The county council’s contribution to the organisation is about £250,000 a year, but what we actually get is about £1.5 million-worth of community transport, so we get six times as much as we spend. The real risk is that we will lose not only £250,000-worth of valuable services but all the extra value on top of that; we will lose £1.5 million-worth of service. That would be a terrible loss from such a cack-handed and ill-thought-through approach to funding reductions. I am not sure how many services in Derbyshire deliver that kind of return on the money spent.

CT4TC provides a number of services, and not only the ones directly funded by the county council. It provides schemes for care home outings, group outings, lunch clubs, regular day trips and a school service, as well as a dial-a-bus scheme and a community car scheme. If we lost the community car scheme, what impact would that have? The scheme exists to help people get to medical appointments with their general practitioner or at the hospital. Those people will still need to get to their medical appointments, and they will have two ways of doing that: they will either have to pay for a taxi themselves, which I suspect they cannot afford or are not willing to do, or they will have to use ambulance transport, which I think is now provided by the East Midlands Ambulance Service, but was previously done by a private provider. That just moves a cost for the taxpayer from one part of the system to a different part—namely, a service that is already overwhelmed and is not particularly efficient, either. I am not sure we are saving any money there.

At a time when we are meant to be trying to join up health and social care, if we move costs around the system and make it harder for people who are quite excluded to get to their health appointments, all that will happen is that a larger cost will end up falling on social care from people not getting the medical treatment they need when they need it. That scheme is vital, and that funding ought to stay.

We can make the same argument for what would happen if we were to lose the dial-a-bus scheme, which helps people who are otherwise excluded or stuck in their homes to get out, socialise, get their shopping, go to important appointments and pay their bills. If that service ceases to exist, where do we leave those people? We leave them more isolated, more lonely and stuck at home, so they cannot get the shopping they need or reach the other services they need. What happens then? They will need more social care and more visits a day. People who are not yet in the social care system will perhaps need to go into it, which will have a much more significant cost than what we will save from making these budget savings.

We are in danger of being very short-sighted here, by looking at one particular cost and not thinking about all the knock-on effects around the system. I fear that if Derbyshire County Council proceeds as it is doing, and we end up losing all these services, that will create a whole load more costs in its already stretched social services budget. The value that it gets for the £250,000 that it spends is far more than that sum, and it risks spending a whole load more if it loses this service. There must be a better way of achieving these savings that does not involve risking what CT4TC says could happen: we might leave them with no option but a managed wind-down if these savings go ahead as planned.

It is not right for us to stand here and oppose every cut that county councils have to make, when we are making the necessary funding reductions to them; that is not fair. We elect councils, and they should make decisions based on their priorities, but it is right for us to ask, “Have you really thought this through? Is this really fair? Is it a sensible system? Are you giving these organisations a chance to reorganise their funding and find a different way of doing this? Are you going to deliver the services that you are legally obliged to?” We are saying, “Why do it so quickly? Take longer over it; think about what you are losing and see how we can replicate it.”

I am sure there is scope for these organisations to be a bit more efficient and to have some more partnership working and perhaps some further merges, to avoid a repeat of leadership costs, management costs, trustee costs and premises costs. We can perhaps make maintenance costs a bit more efficient and get some more efficient routes by not having services split across boundaries. There is a challenge for these providers to become more efficient, but we cannot say that that is a solution to losing the £1.5 million of services that CT4TC provides across the whole county.

It is worth thinking about the other money being spent on transport services around the county. We have a valuable but quite costly bus pass gold card system. I have never been able to work out exactly why we can put someone on a commercial bus service that makes a profit, on which they can use their gold card to travel for free in Derbyshire, yet when they catch a community transport service, they cannot use that gold card, or they can use it but have to pay some of the fare. Is there not a way of thinking more logically about how we merge those two services? Is it sensible for subsidised, profit-making private bus companies to run routes with not many people on them, while we cannot provide a community transport service that is probably more efficient and takes the most disadvantaged and most excluded people where they really need to go to a planned timetable, so that there is a group to make the service viable?

Is there a way of using the money we are spending on the bus pass and on subsidising those services to get better, more inclusive provision that targets the people who really need it? I am not saying we should not have buses going to housing estates that otherwise have no service, or that we should in any way change the gold card or the national bus pass system, but is there a way of linking those uses with community transport, to get better value and provide the better service that our constituents really need? We will then be able to deliver for people who cannot get out of their house if they do not have such a service. That is what we face losing in Derbyshire.

I will conclude by reading CT4TC’s mission statement:

“No one regardless of age, ability/disability, financial status or domestic location should be prevented from enjoying a full life because of lack of access to private or public transport.”

I do not think any of us could disagree with that as a mission, and I hope we can find a way through this funding issue so that that does not become a reality for some people.

--- Later in debate ---
Andrew Jones Portrait The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Nuttall. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) on securing this debate on the important subject of community transport. The community transport sector has for many years stepped in and provided services where traditional public transport services have not been available or not been suitable for passengers. These vital, lifeline services enable people to live independently, participate in their community and access education, employment, health and a range of other services. The key point is that they are always provided for a social purpose and community benefit, not for profit. The range of services provided includes voluntary car services, community bus services, dial-a-ride and wheels to work, making use of every type of vehicle from mopeds to minibuses. Community transport is responsive, accessible, flexible and local. Services are often run by volunteers, who help communities merely out of social kindness without expecting anything for themselves, on which they must be congratulated.

We have heard from Members some great examples of local services, and we have heard how well valued they are and how significant their impact is. There is real scale to the sector: tens of thousands of volunteers deliver millions of passenger journeys. The House might be interested to know that the Community Transport Association has done some analysis of who its customers are. It found that 98% of those who use community transport are older people, and 85% of passengers are people with disabilities or restricted mobility. The figures showed that 78% of community transport services take people to social outings, 73% carry out health-related trips and 64% take people to day centres. The CTA found that 31% of community travel services are provided in mostly rural areas and a further 21% in exclusively rural areas. It is helpful to quantify the points that hon. Members have made, because of the scale and importance of the service. It deals with some of the more vulnerable people in our community, and the social element, which hon. Members from Scotland particularly emphasised, is most important.

We have heard from hon. Members about services such as Bakewell and Eyam Community Transport in Derbyshire. Such services help to sustain and develop local economies and social integration, and we can see the real value of the organisations that run them. Evidently, so can the people of Derbyshire; I understand that a recent petition opposing the possible withdrawal of funding by the county council received strong support from local residents.

The Government recognise the importance of the sector, as we do the importance of all types of bus services. We recognise that buses are of enormous social and economic importance. They are at the heart of a modern transport system. The number of bus passenger journeys in our country is 5.7 billion a year, compared with 1.65 billion journeys on our railways. Bus services do the heavy lifting in our public transport system. That is why we have supported them and will continue to do so. The Government protected the bus service operators grant in the spending review to ensure that vital bus services continue to run.

We have created a £25 million fund for the purchase of new minibuses by community transport operators, so that they may continue to run those vital services. We have started delivering those to organisations, and the number will steadily increase over the next few months. The hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) asked about the Lewisham and Southwark Age UK minibus. Let me provide a bit more information for colleagues. Each vehicle is being individually built to meet each organisation’s needs. The number of successful organisations was actually 310, not 400. When officials from the Department for Transport liaised with community bodies around the country, they found fairly clear consistency in the types of vehicles that those organisations sought. We therefore bunched them into different groups—we had perhaps 25 organisations seeking a 16-seat minibus with a lift, for instance—and those groups are now being dealt with under the procurement framework. The procurement portal has been launched. It is important that we deliver the procurement through a portal, because it will result in better value for taxpayers. The pace is picking up—some vehicles are out there already, and some grants are being made to individual bodies locally. The scheme is an important and popular one, which has my personal attention to ensure that it happens as quickly as possible. That is a quick update, and I will keep the hon. Gentleman informed about progress on the order for his constituents.

I recognise that the sector is working in challenging times, with changes to local authority funding and reform of the bus market. The Government are committed to balancing our country’s finances and reducing the deficit, and I recognise that many local authorities are facing reductions in budgets and difficult decisions about where to spend their money. That is not easy for local councils. However, I gently remind Labour Members that they too stood on a manifesto platform of cuts in budgets, with Health, Education and International Development being the only Departments that would be protected. They should not pretend that they have no mandate on this, because they stood on a manifesto of some cuts and, of course, we all know that it was the Labour party that crashed the economy in the first place.

I cannot comment on decisions made by Derbyshire County Council, but I encourage local authorities to think innovatively about the decisions that they take on public transport funding. Transport is vital to keep the country moving and to continue the economic recovery. Connecting people is a key Government transport objective, and we all understand the social, economic and environmental benefits of effective transport systems. That is why we have provided £196.5 million to the D2N2 local enterprise partnership, provided Derby City Council with £4.9 million for better ways to work as part of the local sustainable transport fund, and given £2.95 million to Derbyshire County Council to repair its local roads.

Many colleagues spoke about access to healthcare. Whether they are visiting a GP or a hospital, people need to make essential journeys and they rely on transport to get them there. A scheme in the Department that is of real interest is the Total Transport pilots. We believe that Total Transport can help. The idea is to integrate transport services that are currently commissioned by different central and local government agencies and provided by different operators. Such integration may deliver improved passenger transport, particularly in isolated communities, by ensuring that existing resources are allocated more efficiently. That might entail, for example, combining conventional bus services or dial-a-ride with hospital transport. The objective is to meet individual transport needs; it is not about what is written on the side of the vehicle.

Some £2 billion of public funding for transport services is provided each year by a number of agencies, in addition to £1 billion for concessionary passes. To break that down, £350 million is provided for local authority support of socially necessary bus services, £1 billion for home-to-school transport provided by local authorities, and at least £150 million for non-emergency patient transport provided by the NHS to individual local clinical commissioning groups. However, that funding is not generally co-ordinated or integrated at a local level, which sometimes results in duplication and wastage of public money—wastage that we can ill afford.

That is why, in April, the Government allocated £7.6 million to 37 schemes run by local authorities to pilot Total Transport solutions in their areas. The pilot schemes will run for a maximum of two years. That is a small amount of money, but a very big idea. It is about integrating services. It has the capacity to make a real difference in meeting the transport needs of every community.

Nigel Mills Portrait Nigel Mills
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Would the Minister care to comment on whether community transport providers can access concessionary fare money? I believe that those who run a for-profit service that is open to everybody can access that scheme, but those who run a targeted community transport scheme cannot get the refund on some of the fares. That seems a bit unfair.

Andrew Jones Portrait Andrew Jones
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What my hon. Friend says is correct. There are different types of schemes under different types of permits, which may therefore attract different levels of fares. I will look into the matter and respond more fully to him.

Let me mention buses, which Members have highlighted. As everybody knows, the Government are committed to devolution. Bus services are inherently local and must take full account of local circumstances and needs. It is right that areas that have ambitious plans to grow and develop their bus markets should be given the powers they need to achieve their aims. We have signed groundbreaking deals with several local authorities, in which we have committed to providing them with powers to franchise their bus services. Franchising continues to form a core part of ongoing devolution deal conversations. Our devolution plans go beyond Manchester, Cornwall and Sheffield; if other areas want to come forward with attractive devolution deals that include bus franchising, they will be considered.

The future of bus services in each area will depend on how well local authorities, LEPs and operators adapt to local conditions. Not every place will adopt the same bus strategy, nor should they. It is about what works best for each area. That could be partnerships, franchising or, where bus services are working well, the status quo. What matters is that local authorities, bus operators and LEPs sort out what will be best for them locally and get on with it. In all that, the aim is to grow the bus market. I am a great fan of buses, and they are a key part of our transport mix. The buses Bill will present us with the opportunity to give local areas powers to make things even better.

As I have described, the Department provides several pots of funding to help provide strong transport and social connections in our communities. It is true that reductions in funding to local authorities have been tough. I was a cabinet member in a local authority for five years, with responsibility for its finances, so I know that these are difficult, big decisions, but the funding has been set at a sufficient level to deliver effective services.

It is up to Derbyshire County Council where to prioritise its funds and whether it ought to be making cuts to community transport. It has significant reserves—I understand that they could be up to £200 million—and it will have to consider what to do. It is the council’s decision, and as hon. Members have said, it is not easy, but the key priority must be to focus the money on where it will make a difference. Community transport really makes a difference, as everybody knows and has been so clear about. I am sure that the council is watching the debate and will listen to hon. Members.

I look to community transport operators to be part of the changing public transport picture and to work closely with their local authorities, and I look to all parties to consider how they might best contribute to providing services.