Liana Etkind
[mailto: / Alison Bell

Director of Environment and Neighbourhood Services

Civic Centre
Reading
RG1 2LU
 0118 937 3787
Our Ref:
Your Ref:
Direct: 0118 937 3735
e-mail:
Date 21Dec-2016
Your contact is: / Stephen Wise, Senior Transport Planner

Dear MsEtkind

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

Thank you for your recent request received in this office on 23rd November 2016

You have requested the following information under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000:

1.What is the total budget for supported bus services in the fiscal year 2016/17?

2.What was the total budget for supported bus services in the fiscal year 2015/16?

Note: This refers to the department for transport’s definition of a supported bus service as: ‘one where a local transport authority has invited tenders for the operation of a service (not e.g. seats on a bus or subsidised tickets etc.), and a contract exists as a result of that tender’. Please exclude extra sources of funding such as Section 106/develop funding, Community Infrastructure Levy, Local Education Authority funding for home to school transport, NHS-funded non-emergency patient transport, social services transport, voluntary transport and other central and national government grants or income streams.

3.What is the fiscal year 2016/17 budget for supported bus services as a percentage of the total transport budget?

Note: For the purposes of this request ‘transport’ includes highway maintenance, home to school/ college transport; adult social care transport; demand responsive transport; special education need transport and voluntary driver schemes, cycling and walking, roads spending, supported bus services and fares. Please include the council’s contributions to projects jointly funded by multiple organisations, but exclude contributions from those other organisations and funding streams, such as Local Enterprise Partnerships, private sector contributions, Local GrowthFund, Department for Transport contributions to Local Authority Major Projects, Local Sustainable Transport Fund etc.

4.What proportion of total council expenditure (capital and current) is constituted by local bus funding?

5.How many and which supported routes have had cuts in services in the fiscal year 2016/17 (for example loss of weekend or evening services)?

6.How many and which supported routes have been completely withdrawn

in the fiscal year 2016/17?

7.Does your council provide free school transport to nearest or catchment school, or to nearest school only? If to nearest school only, please indicate if this is a change since Jan 2012.

Our response is as follows:-

1.The budget subsidy for supported bus services in 2016/17 is £494,000

2.The budget subsidy for supported bus services in 2014/15 was £432,900.

3.Detailed information required to answer this question can be found by referring to the link below;

4.Detailed information required to answer this question can be found by referring to the link below;

5.Community Link route 28 which formerly operated Mon-Sat and served part of West Berkshire Council area on Mon-Fri (in return for subsidy from that council), was, from July 2016, cut back to operate within Reading Borough only and to run Mon-Fri only. The reasons for the changes were a withdrawal of funding by West Berks Council affecting the Mon-Fri route, and the commencement of daily commercial bus services to IKEA Calcot which made much of the Saturday Community Link route duplicated at much greater frequency.

6.None

7.Free school transport is provided to catchment school.

As noted in the reply to your last year’s FOI for CBT, Reading is rather different from most local authorities and is very pro-active in developing bus services. The majority of the supported bus servicebudget noted above is to support the high quality frequent ‘greenwave’ business park, and park & ride services to South Reading. We are working with developers and business parks to develop these services as much as possible to ensure a long term future for these services and the long term employment created at these development sites.

You have asked in question 2 for the budget subsidy figure for 2015/16 which is reported above. However the net outturn was only £267,930 due to progress towards full commercial operation of the supported services which is planned to happen by April 2018. In this respect the budget figure for 2016/17 will be considerably underspent when the net outturn is calculated. This reflects the growth of patronage and revenue of the ‘greenwave’ contract services noted above.

If you would like any further information to help the Campaign for Better Transport understand the effects on bus developments in Reading as a result of the positive Council support, please let me know.

You are free to use any information supplied to you for your own personal purposes or for non-commercial research, private study or news reporting. However, you do not have the right to re-use the information in a way which infringes copyright, for example, by distributing, making copies of or publishing the information, without the permission of the copyright holder, which in most cases will be Reading Borough Council. If you wish to obtain permission for such use, please contact MrCBrooks, Head of Legal and Democratic Services, at Reading Borough Council.

Please note that your request may itself be the subject of a FOI request and will be disclosed in that event.

If you are unhappy with this response to your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act thenyou may ask for an internal review. Please make a request in writing to MrCBrooks, Head of Legal and Democratic Services, at Reading Borough Council. If you request such a review and are not content with its outcome, then you have a right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Stephen Wise

Senior Transport Planner

DX 40124 Reading (Castle Street)