Great Western Coffee Shop

From Burnham-on-sea.com (http://www.burnham-on-sea.com/news/2017/scc-cutbacks-20-07-17.php) - passed to me by a friend as it's not a site I visit often ...


My friend (who knows a thing or five about buses) asked what the highlighted section means - what they're going to d to save £1.6 million from their bus budget.

My thoughts ....

1. A lot less buses will be given council support, leading to a loss of service and a loss of riders, so a cut in what needs to be paid out.

2. Councils negotiate a percentage journey fee with the bus operators - typically somewhere in the 40% to 50% of normal adult fare range - for each ENCTS pass holder fare carried.  Will they reduce the percentage?

3. Do Somerset currently pay for longer hours than they are legally obliged to?  Do they pay for "bus passes" on infrequent services before 9:30, or indeed on a wider range of early services?  Do they pay for journeys on the 23:00 journey from Bath into Frome which runs in the county after the 11 p.m. cutoff? (Service under threat early in the week anyway)

4. Are there services which are classified as "local services" in the county - so liable for support - which arguably are not local services - I'm looking at some of the legs of National Express and of Berry's which may convey passengers for just a few miles as well as the long distance traffic ... and could they exclude support for journeys onto private land, such as to Butlins at Minehead

5. Was the last year's costs inflated by the issues relating to Webberbus ... so that extraordinary expense should not happen this year.

Thoughts, anyone, please!

Well done Somerset County Council. Saturday traffic in Taunton is already bad. Soon it'll be much worse thanks to the Saturday closure of the Park & Ride facilities. Also the P&R services are the only ones to serve Musgrove Park Hospital, Somerset's largest hospital. An unbelievably short sighted decision to save just £50,000. ::)

Another £10m of savings to be found? Perhaps if the hapless councillors hadn't allowed the Taunton Inner Distributor Road contract to get in such a mess then there wouldn't be a need to save that £10m.

Blaming central government cuts is just a convenient excuse to deflect attention from SCCs financial incompetence.

If it is anything like Dorset the subsidised bus services have been slashed from 35 to just 7! This would leave West Dorset with only the First Bus 51 & 53 commercial services. There is talk of reinstating the Lyme Regis town service and the Bridport, Beaminster, Crewkerne to Yeovil, but not Saturdays.
The villages, in future, will have to rely on Community transport, probably once a week. Part of the problem is that, in rural areas, the Senior bus pass accounts for a majority of the passengers, whereas in towns the fare income is much higher. Add to that the Local authorities only get part of the bus pass income back.

With all councils having to pare back on spending with councillors proposing cuts to libraries, cuts to leisure services, cuts to, well you name it, and now cuts to opening hours of opening of park and ride sites one item I NEVER SEE PROPOSED CUTS TO are COUNCILLORS ALLOWANCES.

When I was an elected member of a LA we didn't get any allowances but we could claim any reasonable out of pocket expenses. Them were the days when you stood for election with a desire to serve the community you lived in. Them were the days when arms were twisted to get one to stand to force a contest in a council ward.

THEN came the 1974 Local Government Act and what that brought with it.

No more arm twisting, it was an open door to easy money and candidates had to endure the process of having to appear before selection committees of the local political parties because so many wanted access to this easy money. If unsuccessful at one of these meetings one could always try their luck and stand as independent.

I didn't stand for a second term as I did not agree with councillors being paid in this manner particularly because as an elected member of a LA your employer, by law, had to allow you reasonable time off with pay for civic duties.

I am the bus campaigner who asked Graham Ellis to bring to your attention SCC's having to pay less for concessionary bus journeys ( 1.6m )

The last round of bus cuts ( 2016 ) saw SCC make the following cuts
1) Cut funding for 25 of their Saturday bus services back  to just 5.
2) They pushed back  the  timing for concessionary pass use from 9am to 9.30am
3) They cut the companion element for concessionary pass users

SCC no longer fund  any evening buses  and only fund  5 Saturday buses leaving  little scope to cut back any further. If SCC cut the 5 remaining Saturday buses I doubt that it would make them  huge savings. I doubt that SCC have any weekday services left which  they fund that are not already cut to the bone. 

SCC wouldn't make huge savings if they cut out evening pass use, most oap's in my area don't go out after 6pm. Government ruling means that oap's travel for free but were does that leave other concessionary pass users. Could we be about to see a 2 tire pass system, Oaps travel free and the rest go back to half fare.

SCC could get exactly what they want by paying the operator less per concessionary bus pass journey. The operator could be forced into reducing the number of passenger journeys that they make by reducing the number of buses that they run. SCC get to come up smelling of roses as the bus user will blame the operator for the cuts & not them.

Onto would be impossible to exclude as pass holders don't give a destination as a flat rate is paid regardless of journey. Pass holders get on and tap their card, so the only restrictions would be boarding at the private land.

Although the 0930 restriction I've witnessed many drivers recently letting pass holders on earlier and then the first stop after 0930 they all run forward and tap in!

I could find little real information on the SCC website - like many others it's been tarted up and dumbed down to prevent you doing that. The most recent DfT statistics I can find are for 2015-16, though the figures for SCC are very incomplete - evidently SCC aren't very good at submitting them to DfT. What there are show for Somerset:

No extensions beyond the legal minimum except dial-a-ride (a change from the year before).

A reduction in subsidy from £8.3M in 2010-11 to £6.6M in 2013-14 (later years not given; they may be classed "commercially sensitive").

The number of ENCTS journey has gone from 4.1M in 2013-14 to 4.5M in 2014-15  and then 3.7M in 2015-16 (earlier years missing).

All I could see on the Council's web site was "Concessionary Fares / Net underspend" against that £1.4-1.6M reduction in the future planned spending, and a minuted answer in Committee that "It was clarified that although there is a perception in the community that concessionary bus fares costs the authority, actually it doesn’t.  If fact when bus routes and services are cut the cost come down." Baffling, isn't it?

So my guess is that the reduction in bus services overall, due largely to the cut in Council subsides, leads to a drop in the ENCTS subsidy. That was not allowed for in past plans (i.e for the past and the present) and leads to a saving in the future plans (their MTFP).

Central government lumped all the money they give councils for buses together, both the ENCTS amount (fixed by law, so in theory the council can't just cut it) and other support of all kinds. That way they can cut the "discretionary" part a lot and the fractional cut looks a lot less. But I suspect DfT will recalculate the ENCTS element based on actual spend, and take any reduction off separately in any case. So SCC won't save anything in the end.

Welcome to the forum.   You'll have noted a good selection of replies already.  It would seem that information is patchy from SCC so our various analysts can't see a total picture.   My thought is that savings of this magnitude on buses would be hard to make without some "slight of hand" over central government grant - with the amount that's there for ENCTS being intentionally underspent;  one hopes that the central government might take a benign view of such an action in future years, and being a conservative council with conservative MPs, I suspect they will club together to avoid too much embarrassment.

Wiltshire rather that Somerset used to be regarded as the most car-centric authority in these parts and the hardest to deal with when seeking to promote a sensible overall combination.   Take heart in that the lack of engagement with you here is what we were working with in Wiltshire 10 years ago, but that's now come round very much and we're able to do much more for everyone's good looking at common ground.    That's not a Utopia - far, far from it - but I'm o glad we've moved forward.   Take heart - you could in Somerset too.

Bus operators seem to differ in their rules for pass users before 0930 some charge full fare and others half fare.  Some operators issue tickets whilst others don't. How many pass users have paid a fare not realising that they only need pay for the part before 0930.  As others have stated some operators do allow pass users on before 0930 and allow them to swipe their pass at the allotted time which is all dependent on the operators rules & the drivers mood on the day.

Are SCC already making money out of pass users by not making it clear to them that they only need to pay for the part of their journey before 0930.  

Or in summary - "when you change from one fare regime to another that differs significantly at a time when there are lots of people travelling, you have a mess".

9 O'Clock for bus pass acceptance was for the most part early enough for there not to be lots of ENCTS passengers already on services when it clicked in - up until then, the buses had been running services / routes to get the young ones to school and the middle aged ones to work, and the old ones had learned even before bus passes that the young ones were a noisy lot and best avoided (and that the buses went to schools not shops that early).

Half an hour doesn't feel very long - but an awful lot of ENCTS (local council extension) passengers used to get on those services where I live in that 30 minutes.  That 30 minutes of passengers was essentially paid for by the local rather than the central taxpayer, and comprised not only the passenger's travel during those 30 minutes, but also the continuation of their journey beyond 09:30 on the same vehicle.  A journey at 09:25 from the local Market Place into the city, arriving there 10:15 was fully paid by the local council, even though 95% of it was at a time that central government would have picked up the bill.  And to add insult to injury,  ENCTS passengers joining that same bus at 09:36 at the Sports Centre (after their early morning kick boxing lesson, perhaps?) were fully paid by central government.

Personally, I have answered the cry of "It's not fair - I can't use the bus before 09:30 any more" with an unwelcome response ... "it's perfectly fair - you can use the bus, you just have to pay just like the rest of us rather than having me pay for your travel through my taxes" - but that's not an answer which endears me to the person I'm talking with, and  the same answer from a politician seeking that person's vote would likely mean the loss of that vote.

The immediate result of moving the 09:00 to 09:30 in many parts was that ENCTS passengers who had joined the buses evenly through the hour abandoned the first half hour and clumped in the second half hour - so a bus at 09:15 ran near-empty and the following bus at 09:45 turned people away.  A nightmare for the bus operators, as they had a wasted resource for 30 minutes, followed by one that was so busy they had to either turn people away (loss of income) or put on a bigger bus (spend more) than was previously the case.

I like the "Faresaver Solution" of charging ENCTS holders a half fare if they join between 09:00 and 09:30 (and I think  it applies earlier too?).  As the payment from county or centre for an ENCTS journey is essentially similar to a child's fare, it means that the bus company is in the same position financially as it was before the change of ENCTS start time from 09:00 to 09:30 - with the fare being paid by the traveller and not by the local council.  The bus company comes out smelling of roses for a concession which hasn't actually cost them anything, and there' understanding by the passengers of the need for government to save money - it's viewed as a reasonable compromise by all, even though in practical terms the ENCTS pass holder is actually paying now, and taxpayer support is down.

Joining the bus and just going up to "swipe" at 09:30 is probably against the rules.  The passenger's travelling without a ticket (and indeed without intention to pay for that part of the journey) - a loss of income for the bus operator, except that when they go up and swipe the council can then charge the central government pot for the shorter journey from that point, which is likely to translate as the same flat fare anyway under ENCTS tallying.   

Within the rules and to pay the minimum required from his/her pocket, the ENCTS passenger wishing to start his/her journey prior to 09:30 should buy a ticket to the first stop after 09:30, then get off the bus at that stop, join the queue and rejoin the bus, swiping in for a central funded taxpayer journey.  And, yes, a lot of bus companies and passengers go through that procedure.   It may be mighty dangerous if the bus stop called at at 09:31 is in a country lane and was OK for the one or two occasional users, but not for 30 people milling about to split their journey.  It also slows the journey don while the pantomime of getting off and back on is performed.

Thank yo for reading this far - and sorry that (after all of that) I'm not proposing a solution.  Hopefully it clarifies for you (it certainly did for me as I wrote it) just what the knock-on effects are / have been of changing from 09:00 to 09:30.  I feel that many of the elected councillors who have made the decision to change from 09:00 to 09:30 took the decision purely to remove the local payment element of ENCTS passengers from their budgets, without giving proper/much/any consideration to the very serious side effects their decision would have.  The side effects were predictable, but where there's the attraction of more money in the till, were they going to care about side effects on a service they probably don't use very much if at all?

In 2016 The areas of discretionary policy were to be reviewed with a view to reducing or removing Encts pass holders are as follows

The 50% discount of the cost of the fare ( up to a maximum of £5 per single trip or £10 per return journey) when travelling on community transport ( including car schemes will be reduced to a 25% discount.

Concessions will not apply for travel between 9.00 - 9.30am on public transport and community transport services ( including car schemes).

The companion free travel element will be removed

David Fothergill stated in a BBC interview  in 2016  that   the council says it has to save £100m over five years on ENCTS.   Does that mean that the 1.6m is a part of that overall £100m saving.

I was talking to a local independent earlier this week, and he is receiving £1.40 per swipe regardless of journey length from Devon county council. He doesn't issue tickets to pass holders, and isn't required to enter the destination. Pass holder gets on and taps in with no need to communicate with the driver if they don't want to.

Cornwall council may be bad payers. Highlighted in the Western Greyhound insolvency report the difficulties the insolvency company had dealing with CCC. I've attached a screen shot extract from the latest document from the liquidator as couldn't copy the document. This document is dated Feb 2017, WG went under in March 2015!

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/document-api-images-prod/docs/iAL4YWxotR0EWOvfanMdzITHweUWLwdVXm8R2h8BS4s/application-pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=ASIAIUFJE2QDT3CJRFHQ&Expires=1500711211&Signature=AEsreWfWO3i9FRZ75B3xXTLsFhU%3D&x-amz-security-token=FQoDYXdzELX%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaDFWfjbytwIaiotE0GyK3A5PS7TrT%2F0c%2BWquskZAanzizWBMcf5AfmwCepLJhO%2FX5nlaSc21vM7a%2BGTNydjfqSp%2BvKv6rEMflAmLQmr1gg4qtEVA78apO%2BBT1n3a7MwgQwjCmdj%2BoiTNcVnqawsxr8B5FtCeg8YdmoMAPq4QOL5w%2FkD6VhVGWYjeTXvSaXH6BJ5gtsltwgRdMtiPGdH5kwUu%2BOCQb2SOGACP4al7571sb9vgR%2FLrU2NKnBLt8qoWLXnEZ%2BvE2tIIz7xDTtCvKvfd9LsFyKj2wS7GRIgq5igyyQ7R8kk8AmMuKneTMCHm3TYonUYopy%2BDxN%2F7qB2umdkZwkvkOGJF4qoxwbTWlK9ZM%2BSeM3CuWCg6xwrQb2WpHn%2Fs3wwZN%2F85Si0ZfPx%2FH5ReU%2BKvb37maQbLtx871DIuxCpkn0%2FirQpM4ge6HeKe1blTBhfDC1np8TrwlNMMUrJ%2BWPMpzvB8mtEci3n6SjNbiAwz4y1v%2Fn5t2%2B%2F9f%2F%2B6VDeAMrs6rkDcVXR%2B3xheRI9o%2BCqZ%2Bl3%2Be9ixX4AbZxcx2NzwRboGDOX00nGV0ZmB0NBjMdGWs4Rov0zNYrNy7QZDRb4cZDlsojpPLywU%3D

Is that required saving from the discretionary local element or from the centrally funded element?

Population of Somerset is around 600,000 (thats his Somerset, excluding North Somerset and North East Somerset), around 20% of whom are ENCTS age. That works out as a required saving of £165 per resident who is eligible for ENCTS per annum.

Notes

- ENCTS cards from elsewhere in England also valid in Somerset - and having holiday destinations such as Minehead that probably means a net extra payment, as opposed to Birmingham, Bradford, Barnsley, Blackburn, Basildon where fewer people go to on holiday than from.

- Although Minehead has a higher proportion than average seniors, the main population centres in Somerset (Taunton, Yeovil, Bridgwater) are pretty average places (from this standpoint) so I have only bumped up from 18% to 20% my age proportions above

The age at which ENCTS has been applicable has crept up over the years - when it started, it was for anyone aged 60+, but the scheme has been reduced over the years by letting that age creep up.  Indeed, I'm one of a huge number who could have been travelling on a bus card by now had the scheme not been pulled back.  What difference have those changes made to expenditure by councils (whether or not back funded by central government) to their ENCTS payments?

Further research ... Government stats from 2 years ago

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/concessionary-travel-statistics-year-ending-march-2015


That suggests that ENCTS cards are held by around 80% to 90% of those people who can hold them (no huge surprise).


If Somerset's about the same ... 120000 * 0.85 * 102 * 1.4 = £14,565,600 ENCTS payments made to bus operators per annum against which a saving of £10,000,000 a year looks like a two thirds cut in funding.  That strikes me as very optimistic indeed considering the statutory nature of most of what's left.   The alternative £1.6 million where we started this thread could be possible if Somerset Council were to cut the £1.40 paid down to £1.25 - and they are talking in that article of "contract renegotiations" though not in relation to buses.

I suspect they pay well in excess of that in subsidies. Cornwall council have their monthly outgoings on their website in a spreadsheet somewhere- im on my mobile now and their mobile site is cut down so I can't find it now to link.
I added their payments in one month to First Kernow and it was well over a million a month alone to First in subsidies, without all the other operators. Every subsidy is listed s a seperate payment so involved a long addition!

This links to the Dorset County Council website relating to concessionary passes

https://www.dorsetforyou.gov.uk/media/203463/Dorset-2016-17-Scheme-Agreement/pdf/Dorset_2016-17_Scheme_Agreement.pdf

A very interesting document ...

Looking to see what this means ...

“Total Reimbursement” shall be the sum of Revenue Reimbursement, Marginal Additional Costs and Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs;

Revenue Reimbusement

Revenue Reimbursement = (No. of Concessionary Journeys * Reimbursement Factor) * (Average Cash Fare * Fares Discount Factor)

"Average Cash Fare" shall mean the average fare per journey paid by adult passengers buying single and return tickets where single tickets count for one journey and return tickets count for two journeys;

“Fares Discount Factor” shall mean the factor to adjust the adult single and return fare so as to reflect the fact that in the absence of a free-fare scheme, individuals would buy single and return tickets as well as discounted tickets, for example, day and week tickets.

“Reimbursement Factor” is defined as the proportion of total journeys that are not deemed to be generated by the travel concessions and would continue to be made if there were no travel concessions;

Pity the actual figures are missing!

“Reimbursement Factor” is interesting; if it's deemed that 100 journeys made for "free" today replace 45 journeys that would be made even if the traveller had to pay, then the payment is cut to 45% of the fare. But that does not take into account the wear and tear on the vehicle of need to provide a larger vehicle because of all the extra passengers, nor potentially slower schedules and the need for an extra vehicle because more than twice the number of passenger are getting on and off, and having to settle.

Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs

“Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs” shall mean the costs associated with the requirement to run additional vehicles in the peak period due to generated concessionary travel.

Sections 31 though 36 deal with this, starting

"The Travel Concession Authority recognises that in exceptional circumstances an operator may have to operate additional vehicles in the peak period due to generated concessionary travel. If an operator wishes to claim additional Peak Vehicle Requirement Costs then the operator must supply data and analysis to support such a claim."

This payment is far from automatic by the looks of things - the bus operators need to show how they are exceptional to get anything.

Marginal Additional Costs

A payment in respect of Marginal Additional Costs will be made in addition to Revenue Reimbursement. The Standard Method will calculate this payment on the basis of a payment per generated journey, based on the DfT Guidance as follows:
• Marginal Operating Costs £0.07044 • Scheme Administration Costs £0.002 • Marginal Capacity Costs £0.0968

So this payment is a flat addition per journey of just under 17p

Summary

Unless there are exceptional circumstances:

Total Reimbusement = No. of Concessionary Journeys  * ((Reimbursement Factor * Average Cash Fare * Fares Discount Factor) + 0.17)

example (using educated guesses!)

* 50,000 journeys
* 3.50 single adult fare
* 100 journeys made of which 42 would have been made had the passenger had to actually pay
* Basket of fares / payment via season tickets, etc would have been 10% lower

>>> 50000 * ((3.5 * 0.43 * 0.9) + .17)
76225.0
>>>

So that's £76,000 - or about £1.52 per journey

This is from the Government website, p20 onwards for the calculations

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/565658/reimbursing-bus-operators-for-concessionary-travel-2017-to-2018.pdf

SCC put the blame for their last review in 2016 squarely at the Governments door due to lack of funding. SCC quoted in their review literature ( 2016 ) that due to a continuing reduction in the amount and  the Government provides the Council to run local services, and to manage competing demands for services that the council is legally obliged to provide.  

No mention of SCC's incompetence at managing their own finances.

The majority of Oap's that I have witnessed just tap their card on the machine without stating a destination.  How can any Council keep a proper track over how much each journey actually costs if the driver doesn't log in a destination.

It's all worked out from the total number of journeys with and without a pass. All the questions you would then raise, like how many would not buy a single ticket, what is the fare, would they have paid if passes didn't exist or is this a journey "generated by the concession scheme", etc., etc., lead to a number being worked out or estimated and applied as a correcting factor.

DfT provide a complicated spreadsheet to do the sums, but even driving that isn't easy. A lot of councils bring in consultants to drive the Excel for them - JMP said they did that for Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Hampshire and Bracknell Forest in 2014 (since then they were taken over by Systra who don't publish that list).

All the inputs to the spreadsheet are reasonably factual, though operators have to do a lot of work to collect them. The exception is the fraction of journeys that are generated by the concession, and also how they differ from the "would happen anyway" ones. The spreadsheet works that out by a very dubious method, and DfT then say "if you know better, work it out yourselves".

Either way, you get a "reimbursement factor" - the fraction of journeys that are paid by the scheme on the grounds that a fare would have been paid with no scheme. For the other (generated) ones, there is a payment for the extra costs - extra fuel, buses, staff, etc. - to carry the passengers they get no fare for.

Well, it's not changed for years, so it shouldn't be any more interesting than the last time it came up here ...

But if you want numbers to play with, the DfT Excel calculator is here (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/concessionary-bus-travel-reimbursement-calculator).

This year it's been converted from .xls to .xlsm, which surprisingly makes it less than half the size. It's also lost the example of the Marginal Capacity Costs Model - which is one of the bits of economics theory in there.

The calculator has default values for a lot of the data, but you have to at least enter a value for average fare (sheet AF). All the blue cells are for user input, though there are buttons to put in defaults rather than copy your data. If you don't put the number of journeys in the start page it won't work out any totals for the operator. Of course the one fare value you put in may not be consistent with the defaults, so the results might not be realistic - despite the well-known phenomenon of results coming out of a pretty program looking really convincing (even if you did the programming!).

So, maybe that's interesting too - I think it was submitted to the "amazing things you can do with Excel world challenge" in 2010 ...