northlincs.gov.uk

  90        (37)HIGHWAYS LOCAL TRANSPORT PLAN PROGRAMME UPDATE – The Director of Places submitted a report updating the Cabinet Member on the progress of delivering the current Local Transport Plan and Capital budget programmes.

Transport capital expenditure was mainly secured through the Local Transport Plan (LTP) process.  The council was required to submit a LTP submission for the Department of Transport.  The plan set out transport priorities for the council.  Last year had seen the start of the third generation of the plans.  They now covered a 15-year period.

As part of the LTP submission, council’s were required to produce a three year Delivery Plan.  This plan set out the programme themes and expected outcomes for the plan.

There were two funding streams within the LTP award: Integrated Transport and Highway Maintenance.  The allocations for the current year including carry forwards were as follows:

·         Integrated Transport £1,509.000

·         Highway Maintenance £4,114,000

·         Additional capital £1,991.000

Programmes of work were prepared by professionally qualified officers, considering transport priorities and performance targets.  The breakdown into programmes of work was assessed using agreed policies and criteria.

Highway maintenance schemes were prioritised using nationally recognised highway condition assessment criteria within a prioritisation framework.  Where appropriate, maintenance schemes also included measures to improve road safety (particularly for vulnerable road users), increase personal security, reduce crime and enhance the street scene.

Monitoring of the programme could reveal both underspends or overspends on various budget lines whilst the base budgets were amended centrally.  The current position as set out in Appendix 1 to the report indicated that the LTP programme of works balanced and was fully committed.

Resolved – (a) That the progress of the delivery of the programme be noted and (b) that the potential start dates for future schemes, set out in Appendix 2 to the report, be noted.

The corresponding report of the following item (Minute 91 refers) contains exempt information as defined in Paragraph 3 of Part 1 of Schedule 12A of the Local Government Act 1972 (as amended).

91        (38) BUS SERVICES OPERATOR’S GRANT (BSOG) – DEVOLVING FUNDING TO LOCAL TRANSPORT AUTHORITIES – The Director of Places submitted a report updating the Cabinet Member on national changes to the BSOG scheme in relation to subsidised local (tendered) bus services and how it might impact on existing bus services in North Lincolnshire.

BSOG (formerly the fuel duty rebate) was a grant paid to operators of eligible local bus services and community transport organisations.  The scheme helped them recover some of their fuel costs. The amount each bus company receives was based on their service mileage and annual fuel consumption.  This was affected by type and size of engine. The aim of BSOG was to benefit passengers. It did this by helping operators keep their costs down and enabling them to run services that might not otherwise be profitable and might be cancelled. 

The amount of reimbursement as a proportion of actual fuel duty incurred had reduced in recent years.  In 2012, the DfT cut BSOG down to 61% from 81% of the total amount of fuel duty payable (from 43.21p per litre to 34.57p per litre).  Bus operators took into account the amount of BSOG when deciding the tender price they would submit for the council’s subsidised bus routes.

The report gave details of the allocation of the BSOG for North Lincolnshire, along with options for the method of allocating the BSOG. 

Resolved – (a) That Option 1, as set out in paragraph 3.1 of the report, be approved, and (b) that officers include final recommendations on how to distribute BSOG to all registered services in a further report for consideration in January 2014 on subsidised bus services.

Note: Reports are in Portable Document Format (PDF) and therefore require a suitable reader to view them. A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided on the site). 

Where there is no report this is because it is exempt, as it contains information which is considered to be of a confidential nature, as detailed in the Local Government (Access to Information) Act.