Baroness Vere of Norbiton Minister for Roads, Buses and Places

Great Minster House 33 Horseferry Road London SW1P 4DR

Tel: 0300 330 3000 E-Mail: [email protected]

Web site: www.gov.uk/dft

To: Bus and Light Rail Operators Directors of Local Transport Authorities and Children’s Services

22 February 2021

Dear Colleagues,

The last few months have been challenging for all of us, and I want to thank you and your teams for your efforts to maintain service provision, which in turn has enabled our key workers to travel to work, children to go to schools, and allowed the most vulnerable in our society to access the vital services that they need. This has truly been a national effort.

Following the publication of the Roadmap on 22 February I am writing to update you on our expectations of local transport and highways authorities as we emerge from the national lockdown. I want to draw particular attention to the Prime Minister’s announcement that pupils and students in all schools and Further Education settings will return to face to-face education from 8 March.

Bus and Light Rail service levels

In the Department’s letter of 13 January from Stephen Fidler, Local Transport Director, we asked that during the full national lockdown, Local Transport Authorities and bus operators work together to ensure that only the minimum level of services necessary to meet demand safely were in operation. I am grateful for the response to this, as bus services have reduced to around 80% of pre-Covid levels, ensuring that those who needed to travel could do so safely, as well as providing service provision for testing and vaccination sites.

However, considering the publication of the Roadmap, my expectation is that you will now work to increase service levels to reflect likely changes in demand as a result of restrictions being reduced. Returning children and young people to face-to-face education on 8 March is the first step in easing this lockdown.

Services may need to run at up to 100% of normal, pre-Covid levels, and in limited cases exceed this. I expect bus and light rail operators and Local Transport Authorities to work together to ensure that there are sufficient services available to ensure that the public can travel safely, and to support this the Department for Transport will continue to make funding for bus services available through the Coronavirus Bus Service Support Grant (CBSSG), and for light rail services via the Light Rail Revenue Restart Grant (LRRRG)

I also ask that you continue to communicate clearly to passengers about what services will be running where and when, and about the steps they need to take in order to travel safely

in line with the Department’s Safer Transport guidance1. I urge LTAs and operators to continue to work closely together to ensure that this is achieved.

Home to school and college transport

The Department for Education has confirmed that funding for additional home to school and college transport remains in place and has written to Local Transport Authorities on this. A survey is currently with Local Transport Authorities in relation to costs for the current term and forecasts for next term.

Guidance issued by the Government2 sets out the expectations for dedicated school and college services, including services using this funding. This funding should continue to be used to provide additional services to ensure that children can travel to school safely. We ask LTAs and operators to work closely with schools/colleges to carry out the steps outlined in this guidance to ensure there is sufficient capacity for pupils travelling to school and college, and that appropriate safety measures are put in place. The position remains that social distancing guidelines which apply on public transport do not uniformly apply on dedicated school and college transport services, though social distancing should be maximised where possible. Where distancing is not possible, other measures from the guidance – such as increased ventilation, avoiding face to face seating and enhanced cleaning - become even more important.

Staffing levels

I recognise that you will face a number of challenges whilst delivering these priorities, particularly around managing staff absences and ensuring sufficient driver and vehicle capacity on both public and home to school transport. This is particularly the case considering current rates of virus transmission and the recent addition of 1.7 million people, including 820,000 adults between 19 and 69, to the Shielded Patient List until 31 March. Having robust plans in place to monitor and manage staff absences (including workers who are awaiting COVID-19 testing results) is vital to maximising delivery of these priority transport services.

Transport Demand Management

The Department set up a Transport Demand Management (TDM) programme to provide LTAs with support to establish or develop TDM plans and processes to respond to the Covid outbreak. To date we have provided over £9m in funding to LTAs to improve their long-term TDM capabilities, as well as consultancy support for the delivery of these plans.

I expect that those of you who took advantage of this programme now have robust TDM plans in place. These plans, along with the experience of facilitating the safe return to education in September 2020, should support you to continue to effectively match travel supply with demand. The targeted programme of support provided by Mott MacDonald Consultants will continue up to the 31 March 2021 as we emerge from the current national lockdown. The Transport Demand Management toolkit that they developed in conjunction with the Department for Transport remains available on gov.uk.3

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-transport-guidance-for- operators/coronavirus-covid-19-safer-transport-guidance-for-operators 2 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transport-to-school-and-other-places-of-education-autumn- term-2020/transport-to-school-and-other-places-of-education-autumn-term-2020 3 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/transport-demand-management-toolkit-for-local-authorities

Face Coverings and Social Distancing

There is a significant government communications campaign to help support public compliance with face covering regulations and understanding of social distancing, but we expect operators of transport hubs to continue to adhere to the responsibilities set out in the Safer Transport Guidance.

My officials are currently working with a number of operators and Local Transport Authorities to provide further enforcement powers to issue Fixed Penalty Notices for non- compliance with face covering regulations on local services. If you are interested in taking on these powers, please contact them as soon as possible at [email protected]

Workforce testing

Alongside the vaccination programme, testing forms a critical part of the roadmap to recovery. We are supporting the rollout of asymptomatic testing for transport workers which is being led by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC). In January, my officials held round tables to present the process and encourage transport operators to sign up using the DHSC online registration portal4. I am very grateful to those of you who have already signed up and are offering asymptomatic testing to your staff: by doing so, you are helping to identify people who may unknowingly risk spreading the virus and are thereby preventing workplace outbreaks and making the country safer for everyone. If you have not yet signed up, please could I urge you to do so now.

Where operators cannot set up workplace testing, for example because their workforce is too small, we are recommending that transport workers get tested at community testing centres5 being set up by local authorities. As outlined above, given the roadmap sets out that schools will return from 8th March, I would encourage school transport workers to get tested at their operator's workplace test site or their nearest community testing centre once this becomes available.

We are also investigating different approaches, such as daily contact and home testing. DHSC will be reviewing the success and outcomes of pilots to determine whether these can be rolled out more widely. We welcome the support and engagement we have had so far and do continue to let us know how we can help you unlock barriers and encourage further sign up and rollout of asymptomatic testing.

Thanks to the ongoing support from transport operators and Local Transport Authorities, we have been able to keep people moving throughout this pandemic, and I am confident with your continued operational collaboration, we will continue to do so.

BARONESS VERE OF NORBITON

4 https://www.gov.uk/get-workplace-coronavirus-tests 5 https://www.gov.uk/find-covid-19-lateral-flow-test-site