Response from Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council on Improving Public Transport Consultation

Your name: A Council Response

Organisation (if applicable): Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council

Email / telephone number: 01495 355530

Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council welcomes the opportunity to provide as a response on this important national consultation. The Council is broadly supportive of the need for improving public transport in Wales and recognises the opportunity for considering how the overall system for public transport can be improved across Wales. Public Transport plays a vital role for our people and communities of Blaenau Gwent to be social and economically active, ensuring that our area, which lies on the periphery of the Cardiff Capital region, is appropriately connected to the region and beyond. Our recent engagement activity in Blaenau Gwent to develop our well-being plan, the ‘Blaenau Gwent We Want’ engagement programme, showed that our local people frequently identify public transport as being one of the key barriers to help improve our area and region. Furthermore, it is regularly picked up as a specific issue by our representative forums for Older People and People with Disabilities. Our town centres also rely on local bus services and taxi provision for transporting people to and from our towns. Without these the footfall in our town centres continues to fall exacerbating the problems in our towns. Improvements in the public transport system also need to consider how people get to places across the region deemed as ‘trip attractors’. Specific relevant examples from recent engagement exercises being facilities such as regional hospitals and places to access job opportunities (e.g. job centre). More consideration of fundamental changes of regional and national structural systems in such areas need to ensure that access is firmly at the

1 centre of planning, and public transport needs to be actively responsive to such changes to prevent groups of vulnerable people with in our communities from being further isolated from key services and facilities. We are generally supportive of the approach for improvement and some of the associated options outlined within this consultation. However, what must be ensured in any movement to a more consistent and national approach to public transport, that all areas of Wales and considered fairly, recognising that on occasions certain areas may require additional support, due to specific local authority area issues. This is the overall response from the Council, and will be supported by a separate response from the Council’s General Licensing Committee which specifically focus on the taxi and private vehicle hire element of the proposals identified within the consultation. Finally, due to the importance of this consultation for our area, as a Council we have actively encouraged participation via our established engagement and partnership channels. This has included raising awareness of the consultation with all our elected members, Public Services Board and Well- being partners, local Town and Community Councils, and interested local people that are part of our key engagement groups (Citizen’s Panel, 50+ Forum, Access for All covering Equalities and our Youth Forum). The provision of ‘Community and Youth’ and ‘Easy Read’ versions of the consultation documents we envisage will aide these groups to participate in their important conversation. We will note however that what the title of the consultation promises – Improving Public Transport – is perhaps not directly matched with the types of topics and questions being asked within the document. The topic and question structure is more focused on particular areas of specialism and we believe it would be fairly difficult for people without a comprehensive understanding of issues such as ‘Enhanced Quality Partnerships’ or ‘franchising bus services’ to be able to provide a balanced view on what improvements are needed. As a consequence of this, the Council will note it broad support for certain proposals to the response provided by the Cardiff Capital Region Transport Authority (CCRTA) for specific issues within part one of the consultation relating to bus services.

Part 1 – Bus services

Joint Transport Authorities (JTAs)

The Council does agree that working with other local authorities is important for delivering local bus services.

The Council supports the development of a Regional Joint Transport Authority (JTA) on a statutory footing under the regional footprint mirrored for the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal and the supporting Cardiff Capital Region Transport Authority (CCRTA). This covers ten local authority areas in South East Wales, serving over 1.5 million people, and is supported by each Local Authority within the area.

It is envisaged that this regional approach, should it receive the appropriate financial support, will lead to an improvement in strategic and financial planning, and subsequently improved service provision of public transport which can be applied consistently across the region. It will also embrace the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 ways of working to integrate our provision through more effective collaboration.

Furthermore, a regional approach should be looking to identify a number of measures collectively to tackle the declining passenger number currently being experienced across Wales (which is noted in the White Paper) and work collectively to identify and implement innovative and responsive provision which is focused towards the current and also the future needs.

As a local authority, we would refer to the proposals contained and presented by the response from the CCRTA, which provides a detailed response on how an effective regional JTA could be implemented and would work effectively with Welsh Government and Transport for Wales to deliver transport aspirations for the region.

It is recognised that Welsh Government as the National Government for Wales commits a significant part of our nation’s funding allocation to supporting public transport. However, it should be noted that this is not exclusive to Wales, and should not be seen as one of the fundamental reasons why Welsh Government should be represented on any formed JTAs or committees.

Consideration needs to be given to ensure that any system that is set up should fully include accountability frameworks for the delivery of improving public transport within the region (democratically and financially) which met the requirement of Welsh Government, without the potential consequence of creating systems with conflicts of interest.

The Council has no specific comments relating to the proposals Welsh Ministers having powers to issue guidance and direction to failing JTA, other than that if they are represented on a JTA they may be issuing guidance and direction to themselves.

Proposed JTA Functions in relation to buses

Yes, the Council is broadly supportive of proposed division of national and regional functions outlined within the consultation.

Enhanced Quality Partnerships (EQP)

The Council has no specific comments on topic of EQP, but broadly supports the detailed response provided to Welsh Government by CCRTA as part of this consultation for questions 8 and 9. Representatives from the Council are appropriately represented on CCRTA and have been involved in signing off the response.

Franchising, Franchising in practice and Permits, SMEs

The Council has no specific comments on topic of franchising, but broadly supports the detailed response provided to Welsh Government by CCRTA as part of this consultation for questions 10 to 15. Representatives from the Council are appropriately represented on CCRTA and have been involved in signing off the response.

Local authority bus services

The Council has no specific comments on topic of local authority bus services, but broadly supports the detailed response provided to Welsh Government by CCRTA as part of this consultation for questions 16 and 17. Representatives from the Council are appropriately represented on CCRTA and have been involved in signing off the response.

Eligibility age for the mandatory concessionary fares

Even though the Council recognises the importance of the mandatory concessionary fares scheme reflecting the wider demographic changes that are taking place across Wales in terms of an ageing population and an older workforce, we do not support the proposal to increase the eligibility age in relation to women’s pensionable age.

We believe that for many, including some people in their early sixties this scheme is, and will continue to be, integral for social and economic mobility. Furthermore, we must be mindful of the huge issue of loneliness and social isolation for older people. It may also be worth considering that less people on buses may well equal fewer buses and bus services, and the potential impacts of this.

Any proposal for change should be fully assessed with mitigating actions identified, considered and addressed especially with regards to any unintended consequences, bearing in mind that there are significant health and (healthy) life expectancy inequalities in some areas, especially our more deprived communities.

We also believe there has been a missed opportunity to get wider population of Wales actively involved in this part of the consultation about changes to the concessionary fares scheme given that a significant proportion of the population may be affected by any proposed changes.

Public transport information and monitoring

The Council broadly agrees with the proposals relating to information and monitoring, and supports the detailed response provided to Welsh Government by CCRTA as part of this consultation for questions 20 and 21. Representatives from the Council are appropriately represented on CCRTA and have been involved in signing off the response.

Part 2 – Taxis and private hire vehicles (PHV)

The response to the questions in Part 2 of this consultation will be sent through on behalf of the Council from the Blaenau Gwent General Licensing Committee. The response will cover the following four proposals set out in consultation:

1. Setting national standards for taxi and PHV

2. Enforcement

3. Information-sharing

4. Governance through a Joint Transport Authority (JTA)

Welsh language

The Council does not have any specific views on the proposals on the Welsh language, other than to note that any proposals and subsequent consequences would need to ensure they were in-line with the Welsh Language Standards.

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We are happy for our response to be made public