Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to Budget 2018, how much of the the £420 million to be provided to councils to fix potholes and carry out other road repairs will be allocated to (a) South Tyneside Council and (b) Gateshead Council.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
From the £420 million for road maintenance announced in the Budget 2018, the Department for Transport has allocated (a) South Tyneside Council with £0.686 million and (b) Gateshead council with £1.2 million. This funding was provided to authorities on 13 November 2018.
This funding is in addition to just under £6.2 billion the Department are allocating to highway authorities between 2015 and 2021 for local highways maintenance, including £296 million through the pothole action fund.
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the trends in the (a) quantity and (b) frequency of bus services in (i) Jarrow Constituency (ii) South Tyneside and (iii) Tyne and Wear since 2010.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani
The department does not hold any data on the quantity and frequency of bus services for Jarrow Constituency and South Tyneside, the lowest level geography available is upper tier local authority, in this instance Tyne and Wear.
Data on vehicle miles on local bus services by local authority including Tyne and Wear is available for the years 2013/14 to 2016/17 in the data table BUS0208 in the Annual Bus Statistics for each respective year at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bus-statistics#published-in-2018 .
Bus operators must register their services with a traffic commissioner in the traffic area in which the service operates. The Traffic Commissioners’ annual reports provide information on the number of live local bus registrations in the North Western Traffic Area as at 31 March of each year; this information can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/traffic-commissioners-annual-reports. The report for the year ending March 2010 can be found here: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20131113220328/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/traffic-commissioners-annual-reports
Local authorities are best placed to manage changes in their local bus network. The Bus Services Act 2017 gives them additional powers to do so through partnership working with commercial operators. It also gives Mayoral Combined authorities the automatic right to franchise their bus network and the Department for Transport can also grant these powers to other local authorities who make a satisfactory business case. The Department is also developing regulations to require bus operators and local transport authorities to provide data, in open formats, about local bus services including routes and timetable data; fares and ticket data; and real time information. We are working closely with industry to develop the regulations and it is intended the requirements will be phased in over the next few years.
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much his department has spent on bus services in (a) Jarrow Constituency (b) South Tyneside and (c) Tyne and Wear in each year since 2010.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani
Up until 31 December 2013 Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) was paid directly to bus operators and was not split between commercially run or subsidised bus services. We are therefore unable to provide figures for this period. From 1 January 2014 local authorities have received funding equivalent to the level of BSOG which would otherwise have been paid to operators for running subsidised services in 2014. Details of the amounts paid to local authorities each year can be found on the “Payments to Local Authorities” tab of the relevant spreadsheets published at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bus-services-grants-and-funding#bsog-spend
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has allocated to Nexus for (a) commercial bus services and (b) supported bus services in each year since 2010.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani
Up until 31 December 2013 Bus Service Operators Grant (BSOG) was paid directly to bus operators and was not split between commercially run or subsidised bus services. We are therefore unable to provide figures for this period. From 1 January 2014 local authorities have received funding equivalent to the level of BSOG which would otherwise have been paid to operators for running subsidised services in 2014. Details of the amounts paid to local authorities each year can be found on the “Payments to Local Authorities” tab of the relevant spreadsheets published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/bus-services-grants-and-funding#bsog-spend
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department has allocated to Nexus in each year since 2010.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Department has provided Nexus Metro with significant funding every year. The specific amounts covering capital and revenue funding are:
2010/2011 | £ 60,641,372 |
2011/2012 | £ 59,594,546 |
2012/2013 | £ 57,787,939 |
2013/2014 | £ 57,222,753 |
2014/2015 | £ 52,423,624 |
2015/2016 | £ 57,057,851 |
2016/2017 | £ 56,771,798 |
2017/2018 | £ 49,311,586 |
2018/2019 * | £ 49,248,356 |
* Grant claimed based upon estimated figure
Note that the grant payable since 2010/11 has been subject to indexation and taking account of expected efficiencies.
Furthermore, in the 2017 Autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced a £337m direct grant to deliver a new fleet of trains for the Tyne and Wear Metro.
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has held with Nexus on the proposed replacement of the Tyne and Wear Metro train fleet.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
In the Autumn 2017 Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a direct grant of £337m to invest in new fleet for the Tyne & Wear Metro. Nexus provide the Department for Transport with regular updates on this procurement work as part of its regular reporting. Nexus are responsible for the management of the procurement, delivery and rollout of the new fleet of trains.
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the benefits of (a) Crossrail and (b) High Speed 2 are for North East England.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
Both Crossrail and High Speed 2 will provide benefits that reach far beyond the towns and regions directly served by the new lines.
Specifically:
a) The Crossrail project is estimated to generate at least £42 billion for the UK economy, and is generating enough work to support the equivalent of 55,000 full time jobs throughout the project and its supply chain all around the UK. In total, approximately 62% of suppliers are based outside London. A number of these suppliers have bases in the North East including Mammoet, who supplied cranes and specialist equipment to help assemble the tunnelling machines, and Cleveland Bridge, based in Darlington, who supplied steel to Crossrail sites.
b) On HS2 with respect to the North East specifically, the Secretary of State has confirmed the connection to the ECML at Church Fenton, east of Leeds. This link will help ensure that the Eastern Leg of the HS2 route is fully integrated into the wider rail network. On current plans the link will be used by HS2 services to York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle from both Birmingham and London, delivering improved connectivity and journey times between those locations.
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that public transport (a) infrastructure and (b) vehicles in the North East are accessible to people with disabilities.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani
The Government wants to ensure that transport in all parts of the country is fully accessible to disabled people. The Department for Transport will publish an Inclusive Transport Strategy setting out how we will achieve this later this year.
The Strategy will set out our key policy and investment priorities for improving disabled people’s access to all modes of transport. It will also confirm our timeframes and proposals for monitoring delivery. The Strategy follows a consultation in 2017 on a draft Accessibility Action Plan, which received over 1,000 responses.
The Strategy will build on significant accessibility improvements made nationwide in recent years, including:
Asked by: Stephen Hepburn (Independent - Jarrow)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that the proposed plans to construct a third runway at Heathrow Airport benefits North East England.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
Expansion at Heathrow will benefit the North East, both specifically through the commitment to reserve about 15 per cent of new slots being used for domestic routes, and more generally through the new economic growth and thousands of new jobs that Heathrow has estimated will be created across the country.
Following designation of the Airports National Policy Statement on 26 June, the Department for Transport published the Relationship Framework Document which sets out how the Department and Heathrow Airport Limited will work together in future, collaboratively and constructively to deliver the strategic objectives and benefits of expansion. The Relationship Framework Document can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/heathrow-airport-expansion-relationship-framework-document