Total Transport Pilot Fund Application Form

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Department for Transport
Great Minster House
33 Horseferry Road
London SW1P 4DR
Telephone 0300 330 3000
Website www.dft.gov.uk

You may re-use this information (not including logos or third-party material) free of charge in any format or medium, under the terms of the Open Government Licence. To view this licence, visit www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/ or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or e-mail: .

Guidance on the Application Process and this application form are available at:

www.dft.gov.uk/

Applications must be emailed to by Wednesday 11 February 2015.

If you have any questions about the bidding process, please contact Steve Blackmore on 020 7944 3339 or by email:

1. Project Summary

Guidance on the Total Transport Pilot Fund has been published alongside this application form. The guidance provides useful advice on how to develop and write a successful proposal and should be referred to when filling in this application form.

Applicant Information

Local transport authority name(s)*:

This is a joint proposal on behalf of the following local authorities:

East Sussex County Council

West Sussex County Council

Surrey County Council (lead authority)

Brighton & Hove City Council

Senior Responsible Owner name and position:

Surrey County Council has been nominated by the partners as the lead authority for the purpose of the bid. The lead Officer at Surrey is named as:

Ian Boast, Assistant Director, Environment

Contact telephone number: 020 8541 9479

Email Address:

Postal address: Surrey County Council, County Hall, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2DN

Bid Manager name and position:

Paul Millin, Group Manager Travel & Transport

Contact telephone number: 020 8541 9365 / 07968 832 573

Email Address:

Postal address: Surrey County Council, County Hall, Penrhyn Road, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2DN

2. Overview

2.1 Project name:

South East Area Transport Solutions – S.E.A.T.S. (or ‘SEATS’)

2.2. The Geographical Area:

The S.E.A.T.S. bid covers the administrative local authority areas of East and West Sussex, Surrey and Brighton & Hove. This area has an enviable location, with good road and rail connections and access to both Heathrow and Gatwick international airports. But much of the area is rural, for example, 53% of West Sussex is within the South Downs National Park area, whilst Surrey is the most wooded county in England (73% designated as green belt), yet Surrey has a higher annual output than Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city.

The population in the S.E.A.T.S. area is projected to rise significantly by 2033, which will put further pressure onto a range of services such as health care, education and of course transport. The existing and forecast demand for movement coupled with the transport infrastructure deficit creates conditions for congestion, frustration and stifles opportunities for sustainable growth. This is compounded by the absence of fully effective transport coordination.

2.3. Description of the types of transport provision covered by the bid:

· Local authority procured and managed public bus services in rural areas

· Home to school transport - mainstream and Special Education Needs (SEN)

· Adults day services transport

· (Non-emergency) patient transport

· Community transport

2.4. Description of Proposal:

Transport is currently commissioned and delivered in discrete packages, often serving the same client base and using the same supply base. But this isn’t undertaken in a fully co-ordinated way across public sector agencies or across local authority boundaries. The result is fragmentation, inefficiency, duplication and barriers to access. The S.E.A.T.S. project will consider whole system transport need, funding, assets and resources, with the aim of developing a business case that will put residents at the heart of transport provision. Better coordination gives us opportunities, including:

· Integration and co-ordination of transport planned, commissioned, booked and monitored by the public sector working with private and voluntary sectors

· Creating joint or linked scheduling and booking through adaptable IT solutions

· Improving standards and consistency across the area and market place

· Developing a single commercial strategy to manage demand and co-ordinate supply. This will encompass how we work with providers to develop more efficient and effective operations, the interventions required in the supply chain to meet existing and future demand

· Working with stakeholders to improve residents access and knowledge of their transport options across a range of providers

· Growing the market on local bus services to reduce council revenue support

2.5. Total DfT funding sought (£m)

Revenue funding of £490,000 is sought to deliver the S.E.A.T.S. bid as summarised below. It would fund project resources, the IT work required for the brokerage model, along with publicity, promotion and seed funding for trial projects in 2015/16. Overall this will provide the key resources in additional to existing local authority resources.

FTE / Salary including on costs / Total / Period
£000 / £000
Project manager / 1 / 85 / 85 / 12 months
Project staff / 2 / 43 / 86 / 12 months
IT resource, including investigation for brokerage / 0.5 / 55 / 55 / 12 months
Data analysis & market research / 50
Focus groups, including eligibility / 24
Pilot seed funding, publicity & promotion / 190
Total / 490

3. Progress on integration to Date and Further Scope to Integrate Services

3.1 Progress to date in integrating public road passenger transport services

S.E.A.T.S. local authorities are already working in partnership. Improvements implemented and in progress include:

· Cross border agreements are in place for commissioning passenger transport

· Joint procurement solutions are being implemented, most recently through a Dynamic Purchasing System, inclusive of significant supplier engagement

· Working with the former Primary Care Trust, Surrey County Council developed the specification and tendered the existing county wide patient transport contract

· The Sussex Clinical Commissioning Groups operate a single Patient Transport Bureau that commissions all of the patient transport services across East and West Sussex, as well as Brighton & Hove

· Surrey County Council operates a centralised booking service for patient transport on behalf of the six Surrey Clinical Commissioning Groups

· Joint working with the Clinical Commissioning Groups on the specification and re-procurement of patient transport in East Sussex, West Sussex and Brighton and Hove is well advanced

· Consideration of third sector providers, including West Sussex County Council’s in-house minibus fleet, as potential suppliers of patient transport

· Support in creating local third sector organisation (ST@RT) to support the community transport sector in West Sussex is well established

· Collaboration and development work with the third sector in Surrey, including contracting SEN and Adult Social Care transport to not for profit providers and encouraging the start up and maintenance of over 100 voluntary car schemes

· Many years of collaborative close working with public bus operators and community transport providers on numerous schemes, including Quality Bus Partnerships

3.2 Further scope to integrate services

A stepped linear programme of further change is proposed in this bid:

· A single supplier market entry point for S.E.A.T.S. Councils and the NHS

· A single set of terms and conditions of contract, enabling suppliers to work across all areas with ease, reducing administration and improving knowledge

· Piloting further integration, building on existing collaboration

· Greater shared use of resources and assets to extend market influence, buying power and reducing unproductive competition with each other

· Establishing pilots to test geographical impacts on market intervention, integrated service planning to co-design a revised approach to delivery

· Removing eligibility as the sole criteria to transport access to widen the transport options for residents and increase service utilisation

· Bringing together eligibility, public interface, planning, scheduling, procurement, booking, etc, into one integrated delivery model, with pilots to test collaborative use of resources and assets such as an integrated hub or alternative delivery model(s)

· Evidenced based research to inform opportunities that optimise local bus and community transport services, by improving their future design to meet wider community needs and improve integration, focussing on rural areas

3.3. Why the integration described in section 3.2 is a priority

Integration and improvement is a priority because the public sector in the S.E.A.T.S. area invests approximately £100m per annum commissioning transport for their residents. Currently we are not optimising spend and there is growing pressure to reduce total spend. Currently each budget area is looked at in isolation. We believe that with carefully tested and incremental improvements both efficiencies and savings can be secured, alongside improvements in the quality and consistency of provision.

Helping our residents maintain a healthy and independent way of living has demonstrative positive health and well being benefits, with cost avoidance in adult social care and health care spending. Public sector budgets are falling at a time when service demands are increasing. In Surrey, the population of residents aged 75 years and over is set to increase by 36.3% in the next 10-years, ie an additional 37,000 residents. Similarly, in West Sussex the population of residents aged 60 and over is set to increase by 123,600 in the next 20-years. So we need to adapt to help residents maintain healthy independent living supported by good transport giving access to key services.

Money wasted on inefficient transport commissioning takes away the ability to use that funding on other valuable services. This means that health and well-being related outcomes are being impacted by sub-optimal transport solutions. Our residents / patients tell us that a lack of available integrated transport impacts their ability to live their lives to the full, particularly in rural areas. Sub-optimal transport provision is also a barrier for those with personalised budgets who may spend an inordinate percentage of their budget on transport, particularly in rural areas. Alongside this local authorities are prioritising the local economy where sub-optimal transport is again seen as a barrier to access employment, learning and skills.

Our older residents use transport from a range of providers, including concessionary schemes on local bus services, patient transport, community transport, voluntary transport (including voluntary car and faith based schemes), adult social care transport, community bus services, etc. Many of these providers use similar vehicles, meeting the needs of the same individual residents but for different purposes at different times and on different days. Within this there are some conundrums. For example, if a resident is not assessed as being eligible for patient transport the resident cannot go on a vehicle operated for this purpose, yet it is a vehicle that could take more residents as it is going to be operating anyway. To a resident and tax payer this may seem illogical as if the resident were able to pay a fee, why couldn’t they be allowed to travel?

4. Description of Proposal

Description of the S.E.A.T.S. proposal

The aim of the S.E.A.T.S. project is to make transport more effective and more efficient so that it has a greater positive impact on the lives of residents. Making this happen will require a step change in cooperation and collaboration in the S.E.A.T.S. local authority areas, greater collaboration with second tier local authorities, the health sector and the community and voluntary sectors.

Transport is often referred to as being either statutory or discretionary in regard to user access. However, there is much grey in between. Patient Transport is statutory and therefore free at the point of access once a resident has been assessed as ‘eligible’. Conversely, community transport is discretionary. It has a cost to the user, albeit usually lower than a privately arranged PHV or hackney carriage. Yet many community transport providers receive funding from local authorities. Indeed, community transport schemes are already transporting large numbers of residents to and from health appointments, some of whom may well be eligible for patient transport if they applied. The same can be said of the voluntary sector.

Adult social care transport to and from day services is not directly statutory. It is the support and care provided at day services that are likely to be understood as being the statutory service. Clearly local authorities need to get residents to the point of service access. Yet fundamentally, getting residents to the point of service delivery is never part of the development of the service offer in the first place. In fact it is often the last element to be considered, with transport organised as a necessity and in isolation. Being organised separate to the delivery of the services themselves, transport is managed to various standards and in isolation to any other transport available.

The transport options open to residents can be opaque and sometimes confusing. No organisation currently acts as advocate for resident to manage their options, nor is all the transport available comprehensively coordinated. It is the providers / budget holders / contractors of the transport that determine provision, standards and access.

The S.E.A.T.S. project will comprehensively map existing service delivery, the IT systems in place, areas with paucity of competition, existing best practise to be more widely applied, the requirements of specific user groups, eg older people (to better understand key drivers for making trips, existing arrangements and issues, etc). This will involve significant data gathering and assessment. Existing and further stakeholder engagement will help identify gaps in existing arrangements. This will in turn lead to identifying inefficiencies and blockages to user access. Options will then be developed and assessed focusing on better coordination and the removal of barriers to access to enable more effective transport solutions to be provided.

The project will evaluate transport brokerage opportunities, inclusive of flexible IT solutions. This will first focus on patient transport potentially via an integrated option. Options may be based around patient acuity (need) and / or geographic location. The wider aim is to more efficiently organise transport delivered by a range of providers for multi purposes, ensuring that relevant IT is adaptable and fit for purpose to enable: