Transcript

that and therefore can continue to take place virtually. You'll be glad to know. It is only board members that are taking part in the decisions at the meeting. Others in attendance are there to provide advice to the board. The agenda and papers have been published on the Council website in advance of the meeting. The Council will make a recording of the meeting, which is just taking place, and this will be published on the Council's YouTube channel and websites in due course. Today's meeting will be run virtually via Microsoft Teams. Other elected members and officers may remotely join the meeting to speak on specific agenda items or observe. Other members of the public and partners can observe the meeting remotely via Microsoft Teams. There is also some provision for members of the public to speak at the meeting via the public questions or statements that have been submitted in advance. Further, please use the meeting chat function only for the purpose of the meeting primarily to indicate to the Chair that you wish to speak. Please only speak at the Chair's invitation. Please say your name before speaking and please note the importance of turning off microphones and cameras when not speaking with the exception of the Chair. So welcome everybody. If you don't know me, I'm Councillor Richard Wilkins, lead member for Transport and Digital at Somerset Council. I'll start with agenda item 1, which is apologies for absence. So I will go to Joe to give any apologies. Yeah, and we've had an apology from your Strickland of Hatch Green, and I've not received any of us. Thank you. I'm now going to do a section 2, which is a membership update just to remind everybody who are the members of this board. So I'll go to Natasha to go through that. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning everyone. I'm Natasha Bates, service commissioning manager for passenger transport within Somerset Council. So this is just a quick update on membership just to clarify that when the board was established, we agreed the organisations to be represented and this hasn't changed, but the individuals representing them has changed over time obviously with people coming and going. So just to help us manage the meetings and for democratic services to manage membership, what we've done is we've circulated with this agenda our current record of individuals representing each organisation and their deputy were applicable or appropriate, and that's based on our current records and attendance at these meetings. So I'm not proposing to take up time going through it all now, but it's just to say that is there, and if you've got any changes that are required to the individuals representing those organisations, please can you just let Joe Morris know and then we can make sure we have an accurate record for the future. Thank you. Hey, thank you, Natasha. And then we're going to number three, which is the minutes of the previous meeting held on the 6th of February 2024. So I'm a request. Does anybody have any amendments suggested amendments, first of all? I'm seeing no hands. So could I have a someone to, someone to second. First and second this the minutes. Show of hands please. Somebody Tony to propose and lead to second. So quick, quick show of hands everybody in favour. Raise your hands of the of the minutes. I think that's I think that's carried. Drop them down. Okay. This brings us on to item four, which is public question time. Now I believe there was a question submitted by leave Fletcher. However, he's not attending and I believe he's withdrawn the question as with an acknowledgement that there's been a resumption of the service of the West of England service of the 374375 running around Wimmall Hill and he's put his thanks for making that happen. So question two, I'll go to Rosa Cal, who's got two questions, I think, or three. Rosa, are you there? Yes, I am. Good morning Chag. Good morning, everyone. May I first of all apologize to the board. It looks like this is a coordinated effort to attack you in some way. It is not. It is purely what passengers are telling us. So I'm going to start for the first question. Can the advisory board tell us what advice it's giving Yovall Town Council, Somerset Council, to ensure that the sale of the bus station and adjoining development at Glover Walks and its new owners and that it will incorporate a bus station for the benefit of all the visitors and bus and coach passengers are Yovall. Okay, I'll respond to that question first of all, Rosa, thank you for that. And once there are new owners of the site, we will start engagement about the future of the bus station. So I'll go on to question two if that's okay, Rosa. Please. Can the bus advisory board tell us how can Taunton bus and coach station be a sublet to NHS? And be sublet to a public, including the promulgation down of all the public celebrities to the Thames Valley and Great Western Omnibus to allow our vintage bus run, which is welcome. It brings lots of visitors to Taunton. However, I don't understand and the public will not understand how can this station be used by the public during a public event, but not on a day-to-day use. As a bus station, the station has been closed since COVID. It hasn't reopened. It's considered to be unsafe. How can be unsafe for the working day of the public yet be open to the public on an event? Okay, Rosa. There's a lot to digest there and we are currently investigating this claim. So we will give you a written response in due course. Thank you, chair. I'm very simple. Question three. I'm sorry, Richard, you've heard this one before. Can the bus advisory board tell us if it knows where the couch and bus fees for accessing the Somerset bus and couch stations are devoted by Somerset Council? Those machines on the parking are named as Somerset Council. The funds should be solely ring-fenced for station repairs and upgrading and infrastructure in street glass and brie wells from Scheptomallet and the other car parks have checked the machine clearly says Somerset Council. Does the board know what's happening? Okay, so the answer that is currently that the coach parking income is collected alongside car parking charges and due to the nature of the systems, don't separate it. We are, however, looking to use some of our surplus car parking income to support sustainable transport in the same way that we are doing in the Taunton area where we took the decision in December to support the park and ride. Okay, thank you for that. So I've now got David Wrenchwell questions from David. Yeah, Richard, I ask you my question is very similar to roses on this event at Taunton bus station. I mean, I only thought about it. I thought and I go to be honest, that's why I wrote it down because it's so complicated rather than just raise it. I'd be grateful again because Mike and yourself said we didn't have planning permission as a bus station as yet for that operation there. Although, yeah, interesting, I understand it's tempering to COVID. Regularly, so I've seen from from the park for health. But nevertheless, there is the issue of passengers joining buses, both special buses, we understand to run by first and stagecoach, like they were in Penn's aunt, and then the vintage buses. Now, it's all welcome. It's great. They were having a public transport day in Taunton, but there's a safety element down there. And I think we'd like to understand the lease. And I think what is what is come out of this is the NHS still have the lease on the site, which of course, we're hoping very much, Richard, you'll get back from them and or find them a new location in Taunton. They can stay where they like in Taunton, but not in the bus station, which we obviously want to see reopened. Thank you. That's my first. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to refer you back. It's a very long question and we're still we're still investigating exactly some aspects of that question. So we will get back to you in writing. Thank you. It's just it's not a second. It's just we need to understand what's going on there, really. Thank you very much. The second question really is about a similar to roses, except I'm aware that under the schedule of 1985 Transport Act and the 2017 Transport Act, the any bus stations operated by an authority in the case of whether that's first group or whether that is the council that those bus stations have to be open to all operators. A charge is levied on the cost of that bus station to the operators. And that money is supposed to be spent for upkeep. And when I was involved in Wells bus station, we ring fenced that money from Wells bus station to upkeep the money for wells, amendments to council. So I'm a little concerned that money does seem to not be ring fenced. And we can't show a set of accounts that says this is what we're spending on Bridgewater. This is what we're spending on Yoville. This is what we're spending on Wells. And money might just be going off into other into other whether it's it's laudable transport activity in the county. But I think we're in a difficult financial situation in the county. Partnership working and working with groups and as way forward. But I think as we got very little money that making sure the money collecting the bus station spent by operators, I know first has got exemptions on supported services in Yoville and at Wells. But I just think we'd like to see that money just kept in a pot. So is reinvested and doesn't go off into other schemes. So if that could be looked, I understand it's a new council. That's why I've raised it. Something needs to be worked on, we think. Yeah, I'm going to refer you back to the response I gave to Rosa on that because, you know, we it is complicated the way we collect the money. But we too invest an awful lot of, you know, of money. And I think you'll find it will be the reverse. But yeah, we will look into that. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. So question from Barry. Right. Hello, Barry. Can you unmute Barry? No, I've just come in. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen morning. My first time at a bad meeting should actually read the question as everybody got the text. If you don't, if you're happy not reading it, has everybody got the text or would you like it read out? Maybe it's better if we have it read out. I can read it if you like or if you've got it. So I'll run through it quickly. I mean, really, that's all I can say. I can just read the question, just send a couple of comments into it. But I should be able to get for it in three minutes. Okay, so my question concerns the situation in West Somerset with the roots, but as a Somerset roots, 25 and 28, 28 a particularly that serve Norton Fitzwarren since the timetable changes. We've got a number of ongoing problems. And essentially, the new timetable just isn't working. Now, since I wrote the question, I'm aware of some moves to attempt to resolve some of this, which SPP are going to be a part of. And I think the council are involved in. So I don't risk to dwell on this, but I just wanted to raise the issue. And so I just run for the question, how the first South buses or Somerset proposing to resolve the several communicated issues, apparent since introduction of their revised root 25 and 28 a time tables, specifically with regards Norton Fitzwarren, there is lack of an effective weekday peak inbound service to Tornton between 10 past eight and 10 past 11 in the morning. The reason for this is a 28 a peak inbound service now runs through Coughford St Luke and Norton Fitzwarren. But on most days, it's full. And by full, that's with a considerable number of people standing up to 20 people standing. So our 937 service in Tornton effectively isn't there. Given a three hour gap for people to catch a morning bus, we've got some ideas to discuss to try and resolve this. Same situation happens in the afternoon. We don't effectively have a peak outbound service from Tornton in the peak time in the afternoon, because the reverse direction 28 a arrived in the village full doesn't stop drive straight through with a number of standing passengers. So with effectively not got an outbound service from Tornton between 255 and 545, the 255 is a 25. But that's only ever a single decker. The 25 route doesn't seem to be all double decker anymore. And the single decker that works the service occasionally is one of the short town buses. So again, sometimes that runs overcrowded, full up, can't pick up any passengers. It's really a bit of a dire situation. But I think everyone's aware of that. It's been well communicated and we're going to look at it. We have have suffered a lot of early running through the village. We've recorded buses running seven, eight minutes early on a number of occasions. I don't know why this is happening. I haven't recorded anything for the last week. And I think that local managers have dealt with it effectively now. We do still get lots of buses leaving two minutes early off the stops, which isn't a major problem. But I do know the traffic commissioner guidance states depart no more than one minute early. And indeed, the neighboring first companies to the north actually has a charter where they reimburse passengers if their bus leaves the stop more than one minute early from the advertised time. So I'm not quite sure why there's variation between the first subsidiary rules on these matters. But I would like to see first South for dear to that same standard if possible. We get many would be passengers left behind at the bus stop. And of course, with the situation now, it can be up to three hours before the next bus. So clearly, this isn't working. The failures provide timetables at the bus stops. Day 12 of the new timetable, the 25 route was completed. So the new timetables are now all in place. And again, with the 28. Lots of people having to stand. Lots of people put off getting on the bus in the first place. If there's only standing spaces available, which is understandable, especially on that 937 bus, where there's a number of pass holders that would like to use it. We've got a lot of 28 A's coming through here displaying 28 instead of 28 A. I've stopped and spoken to a number of drivers, but it's still happening. Yesterday morning's 28 A went through displaying 28. The ticket to software isn't working for the bid of the route between Bishops Lydia and Cross Keys that comes round through Cottford and through Northern Fitzwarren. The software, I don't understand myself, but the drivers are telling me it's not working. It's not displaying the stops correctly. They're not able to issue, say, a ticket from Norton Co-op to Cottford St Luke. Because I hurry you up, Barry, because you're running out of time. Because the ticket of the system isn't working, I think that's working against the app as well, because the 28 A buses are not tracked on the first bus app. And that is feeding through, of course, to bustimes.org. There's no tracking of these buses, so that needs to deal with a number of errors in a printed timetable and some corrections to need doing, which I hope that we can have in hand soon. And just to summarise, these problems are extending throughout the double turn and mind-head corridors and beyond. They're impacting heavily on passengers using or attempting to use buses on these routes. A significant amount of time and money has recently been invested by several people and organisations to encourage folks to make greater use of their rear-wheel bus services. As long as this seriously substandard service remains in place, we risk undoing so much of that good work as passengers revert to their personal vehicles to make journeys that really ought to be made by bus. Once these people give up bus travel, they're unlikely to return to the mode. Thank you. Thank you, Barry. Just to let you know that Somerset Council, myself, included, met with first Southwest yesterday to discuss all these issues and concerns. And I believe that first we'll be meeting with the bus partnership as well later in the week to further discuss them. So I will leave that there. Thank you, Barry. Finally, we have a question submitted by Emery Taylor, who's a strode college student and Somerset Bus Partnership management team member. I believe he is not attending. So I'll read out the question. The 1620 Wells to Yovell's service, 77, is scheduled to stop at Strode College at 1647. However, over the last few months, it has on over 10 occasions skipped the college and thus left students trying to get home-stranded. This has had a negative effect on myself and other students who are now worried that they may not be able to catch the bus home. The issue does not only affect students on the day itself, but also has a major long-term effect on reducing the overall reliability of the service, which could have detrimental impacts for the students' future transport choices and the overall passenger numbers of this service. This issue has not been resolved despite multiple complaints from various students to first Bus National Contact Centre. What is First West of England and Somerset Council going to do to ensure this issue doesn't happen again? And in response to that, we have raised this matter with the operators previously when we have been made aware of it happening. This is a commercial service and it is for the operator to correct, but we will continue to raise the issue. We will also discuss this matter with Strode College. Okay. Thank you for that, everybody. We'll go on now. That's questions over, so we'll go to item 5, which is the Zebra 2 update. I'm going to invite Natasha to provide an update. Thank you. In terms of Zebra 2, you've probably all seen the recent press releases from the end of March, but since our last board meeting, we have had confirmation that our Zebra 2 funding bid has been successful. That's obviously fantastic news and a brilliant opportunity to introduce zero emission vehicles into the public bus network in Somerset. The bid was submitted in partnership with First South West and we bid for 2.2 million of grant funding, which is being then coupled with almost 13 million pounds of operator funding from First South West. So just to say firstly, thank you to everyone involved at First in this bid. Obviously, a lot of hard work and detail went into the bid application and we're really pleased at first investing in the vehicles and infrastructure in the county, which is brilliant. So just to kind of give a bit of information on the project, the project will see the introduction of 25 electric vehicles into the network and that will be a combination of both single and double decker vehicles and the required charging infrastructure will also be installed at First's Taunton depot on Hamilton Road. And so once the vehicles are in operation, they will be operated on the following services. So the 28 from Minehead to Taunton, the 21 from Bridgewater to Taunton, and those will be interoperable with the 22 from Wellington to Taunton, and then also on the services 1 and 2, which are the Taunton town services. So those routes have been selected by the operator following discussion with the council and they were really looking at their commercial routes and where the investment for those vehicles would be the most viable. So work has commenced on the project now. Now the funding's been agreed and we will continue to update through the board as and when we can at these meetings. Thank you. Thank you Natasha, just to see if we've got any questions from board members to Natasha on this update. Oh, Peter. Firstly, just to congratulate firstly Somerset Council, but especially First Southwest, given the scale of investment, I think many of us amongst the bus users are greatly reassured to see First South investing in its Somerset fleet. Just a small point, these are long-distance routes. So hopefully, as part of the kitting out of these vehicles, there will be USB charges on the buses. Small point, but an important one for users. Okay, Natasha, do you have a response to that? I will double check that with First in terms of the specification for the vehicles. I'm sure I'm sure it's on there, but I will double check for you. I think James is going to jump in on that. Hello, yes, I'm 99% sure on that, but Peter, I will confirm that I'm 99% sure. They haven't been ordered yet, so I can't guarantee and we are working with our engineering colleagues to whilst we'll be ordering the vehicles pretty soon. We do have the opportunity to spec those out, so I really want to make this opportunity to make sure we spec it to what we need in Somerset rather than just a standard specification, so we'll bear that in mind. Thanks, James. Thank you, Tim. I think there's a question from David. Yes, so James, I've worked with James Freeman, no dug, and we've specified two wheelchair spaces on the fleet in West of England. I think Rob's on the call as well, Saunders, but I think we've got about 130 vehicles at an old wheelchair accessible with two wheelchairs. Richard, if you're taking your family out, both partnering with a wheelchair, then obviously that is a great situation to have with first putting extra wheelchair spaces into the vehicle. I wonder if that could be looked at for the Somerset operation as well, and the other thing is the Wi-Fi connectivity as well on the vehicles to make sure we've got good Wi-Fi reception where possible. Thank you, Richard. Okay, I'll defer back to James on that, I think. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Wilkins. Yes, so, I mean, as Natasha knows, I'm really keen, and Peter Travis knows the best partnership. I'm really keen to make sure we listen to what people of Somerset need from these services to make sure that that's considered as part of the specification. So, we're in no rush to finalised specification yet, but absolutely, over the current weeks and months, we'll be making sure we're engaging through the bus partnership and through the Council to get those requirements fed in. So, I'll take a look at that. Thank you. Okay, I think I've got David next. I'm trying to remember if David is a member of the board. Maybe you'll have to remind me. Not hearing, not hearing, David. Chair, it's Joan, where I say I don't think David is actually a member of the board. Okay, so I'm sorry, David. We're not going to take any questions from non-board members. Is that the same with Mick? Mick Leary as well. I think it is. I'm not actually sure which organisation Mick is actually representing today, so. No, I suggest you channel your questions through the bus partnership or straight to us at Somerset Council or direct to the bus operators. But this is a board meeting for board members. At this point. Okay, I think we've actually exhausted that. So, thank you. Sorry. Sorry, it's Sam. Could we just ask Mr. Redwell's turn's camera off, please. I think it's Susanna Clements who's got her camera on as well. The camera that wasn't gone. Sorry. Yeah, thanks. Thank you. Okay, so we'll go to item number six, which is I'm going to invite John Parrot to present the coordination of bus time table changes. Hi, everybody. My name is John Parrot. I'm service manager for transporting Somerset. And this is by way of a reminder really to board members and particularly to operators about the coordination of bus timetable changes going forward. So, at the bus advisory board meeting in October 2023, members agreed to two main timetable change dates per year with flexibility maintained for unforeseen or emergency operational issues and seasonal changes where it wasn't possible to confirm changes at the two main agreed dates. The second change for 2024 is due on the 2nd of September. And a reminder that timetable and bus service changes, registrations and consultations need to take place and the board meetings relating to the chamber change. So, just to give you a reminder of the dates, the consultation period for the next change commences on the 24th of June through to the 21st of July. That's the 28 day consultation period with Somerset Council bus advisory board members and key stakeholders. The next bus advisory board meeting is on the 25th of June. So, it is there that we would invite operators to introduce changes to the board for consideration and discussion. On the 22nd of July to the 1st of September is the registration period, the 42 day registration period where no further changes can generally be made with the introduction date on the 2nd of September 2024. And then on the 15th of October 2024, where the next bus advisory board will be setting the dates for 2025. So, that's the process. And operators are just a reminder, are asked to discuss their changes with Somerset Council in sufficient time for the proposals to be considered and reviewed ahead of the board meeting in June and a pro former for that purpose will be sent out to operators ahead of this date. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. Okay, and any questions from the board members? We've got David. Thanks Richard. John, I'm pleased they're not on the call this morning, which is pointing, but work has got its change one week before Somerset's changes, which we noticed with 1st of England made putting timetables and the displays up quite soon. And it would certainly, I mean, I'm not a great lover of having two first companies in Somerset. I've made that point to Janet Bell, the Chief Executive, but we have at the moment. And so, and we just coordinate that better between the across the county. I mean, Somerset is not just a county council, sorry about your Somerset Council. It's obviously North Somerset and Baines as well. So, and coordinating the services in that of Wells and the through services to Bristol, which I very much welcome from Tom's and Aboriginal to the Sex and the News. But we do need to make sure the coordination is better. And the other thing for James, he was just, James, we welcome that timetable, very much to us, a few errors in it. But John, can we have a look at why we've only got the 1-7-4 between Wells and Baths, and when actually we've got four other routes that have come out of Wells, including 1-7-1 and 1-7-3. So, if coordinating Richard, we need to make sure they're all in there, but it's a step in the right direction of the timetables. But perhaps we could get it corrected on the website. I appreciate it'll be September before we get a book. Thanks very much. There's much to answer there, is there John? I think in terms of the coordination for September, I think we have the same dates. And yes, we will be talking to Wecker about next year's dates ahead of the Bus Advisory Board on the 15th of October. So, hopefully we can come back to say that we've agreed dates. It is difficult when we're surrounded by a number of local authorities, and they've all got slightly different arrangements. But we are aware that most of the cross border services come over from the north, and therefore that's really the key date for us. So, we will attempt to ensure that we coordinate better, certainly, for the ease to change next year. Thank you. Okay, I've got Councillor Mansell. Yeah, thank you, Richard. My question, as I think this paper sort of follows from what the experience has been in April with the changes, and this is clearly very helpful. I do still though have a bit of a concern about how the voices from local bus users are going to be heard in this process. So, I hope that can be made clear, because at the moment when changes are being proposed, there's not really the opportunity. There's not a clear opportunity for the local bus users to feed in. Clearly, we will try and work from this, and it looks like they will be announced 25th of June. But how does this consultation process work? Who do you feed the information to? How is the information about any changes made available? There's nothing I can see, which actually explains what the process will be beyond reporting it to the 25th of June meeting. So, the main need to be a bit of thought given to that, please, and connected to that, when there are changes, we're often hearing that bus users have gone down. But there's no information published. There's no statistics of which are really provided to show that. So, when changes are proposed, can we actually have the information to explain why the changes are thought necessary? And I think as a general point, there's a lack of statistics on bus use being published, especially by route, and it would be really helpful to users to be able to see that and understand. Thank you. Thank you, Dave. I'll just go back to John to give a response to that. I think in terms of the changes and the sharing of the details, when we did the last change, we did provide, or obviously, the operators provided information to some of that bus partnership to have a look at their proposals and timetables. I know in particular, First West of England met with a bus partnership and discussed their changes and things like that. So, we would certainly encourage that. Obviously, there is a period of which, 70 days at which our services are registered, we don't expect operators to go much further back than that, because there's quite a lot of work to do with changes and things like that. But the whole point of this is to get the bus advisory board meeting literally the day after the consultation period starts, so that we do allow enough time for the information to be shared as widely as possible through the board and to allow operators to meet with bus partnership if necessary to discuss those changes in detail. So, that's what we're trying to encourage in many ways, and hopefully that will improve as we go forward. Thank you. Thanks, John. I've got Peter. Peter Travis. Thank you, Richard. Firstly, to say that we very much welcome the timetable that John has just outlined. I think this is exactly what the enhanced partnership should be doing, and what is also happening is particularly with First South and First West of England. We're now having a process of dialogue about various routes, talking to them about route improvements, proposing route improvements, and they're open to those suggestions, and there is very much a much more constructive approach being adopted by them and hopefully by us, and it's beginning to work. It's still the start of that process, but would like to thank both of those first groups for their willingness to talk with us, to listen to us, and to make changes. So, I think it's a much more encouraging situation than there has been for some time, and long may continue, long may develop. Just to echo Councillor Mansell's point, yes, we would very much like more statistics. I'm sure Natasha is banging out lots of statistics and gathering them, but it would be great if more statistical information could be shared so that we all know what the real situation is. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I think, again, that was generally a statement, and so I think we'll move on then. So, item seven is the update from operators on the £1 fair, government £2 fair, and any other relevant updates. So, I'm going to invite, oh, hello, who's that? I think I've just muted them, so you should be okay now. Okay, so I'm going to invite operators to provide any updates, so who wants to make a start on that? James, good. Thank you, Richard. Yeah, just to give you a quick overview, in terms of where we are for this calendar year, and meanwhile, so just get the screen up properly. So, I'll just start with overall passenger performance for buses of Somerset within the county. So, look at January to April, April months today, April is as of middle of April, not today, just to be clear. So, in terms of, I mean, look at the orange line, in terms of where we are versus prior year, in the main, we're looking at growth versus prior year. On average, across the whole year, you've got to be a bit cautious with April because of where Easter fell this year versus last year, hence why you're seeing a bit of a spike in early April, but if you look at it collectively for the whole of January through to middle of April, we're looking about 7 to 8% up in terms of prior year, in terms of performance, which is positive, given we had quite a strong performance and growth last year, and a number of services have come out from last year as well. So, there are a number of routes which are particularly performing strong to give you some example. The 25 is up 35% until last year, the 2841, sorry, this is in the last four weeks, and the 54 is 54% up versus prior year. So, the devil is in the detail, but generally speaking, it is looking positive. If I look specifically at the performance of the £1 fair, some really strong growth again versus prior year, but it is starting to slow down as the year progresses, but to be honest, that is no surprise and nothing to be concerned of. A lot of that is driven just through very, very strong growth at the early part of last year. So, the passenger numbers are holding steady month on month and still remaining strong versus last year, but I would anticipate that will continue to slow further down as we start to see that stronger growth coming through from last year. In terms of our punctuality, just as a reminder, we measure punctuality predominantly on STA and what you can see here just to be clear. If you look at the far right, which was this 2024, week five, so this is our financial year, so week five is last week just to help you, and then that's looking every week previous to that, and you can see there in week two, 2024, that's when the network changes got introduced. To be honest, I'm quite disappointed. I had hoped through a lot of the work we had done to try and change the network with punctuality very key to that. We would have started to see some improvement in terms of the STA and we haven't. So, we're doing a lot more work as Richard alluded to, some of it of which we talked about yesterday, just to ascertain one of the key drivers of this at the moment, and also we're working with Peter Travis and other members of the BOS partnership and BOS user groups to make sure any insight has been fed into us locally so that we can start to ascertain what the challenges are and start to rectify them. So, I'm hoping in the next few weeks we will start to see that turn around because it's certainly not where I would hope it would be particularly given a main focus in those changes a few weeks ago around punctuality. A bigger concern for us at the moment, to be honest, is around lost mileage, so as you can see there, we set ourselves a goal of lost mileage at around 1% across our entire network. And again, similar passing, if you look at the top left here, week four being the most current week working back through that. In the past three to four weeks, we've started seeing escalation in terms of lost mileage versus where we were doing previously, which is pretty strong. And as you can see in the bottom right hand side of that, that is predominantly being driven by challenges with vehicles. And there's a few things that are driving now which we're reviewing. First of all is we're having some challenges around coolant leaks, which are continuing to happen and causing us a problem. That is not just an issue within some asset, it's a general problem nationally and also a supply problem. And what that is doing is driving up our number of vehicles that are being off the road, particularly on the weekends when we see an increase in terms of vehicles that are required to operate the service. So a lot of that lost mileage is being caused by the weekends. So there's a team currently looking about, in fact, I spoke to the first thing this morning to ask the team what we're doing in terms of our processes and supply to get that fixed ASAP. In the meantime, what we have done is we have managed to secure really single streetlights, which were due to go to Glasgow, but we've convinced our national colleagues that they won't go to Glasgow from Scotland, they'll come to Somerset. We've got three streetlights due to arrive, two of them are due to arrive in Taunton tomorrow, and one of them will be arriving on Friday, they just need to be specked up for some of that, and they'll be ready to go into service. So that will help us in terms of dealing with the number of vehicles that we need, and particularly around making sure we've got spares as well. Up till Monday, because of the issues we were having around the coolants, we didn't have any spares available, we've now rectified that. We now have a spare, but we'll be able to have an additional two spares once these streetlights come into effect from tomorrow. So with those changes, I'm not saying it'll be down to 1% by the end of this week, but those streetlights, particularly coming in, will definitely help start to alleviate the problem, start to see it coming down over the coming weeks, but it is a very, very top priority, not just for buses or Somerset for first south to rectify that problem, because it is disappointing to see the lost mileage so high, given where it has been up till this point. That's my update, Richard. Thank you. Thank you, James. Do we have any other operators? I forget, though. Hi, Richard. I'm from the first west of England. Fantastic. So I'll give you a very brief overview, because I know we've spoken a lot recently and James has given an update, which is quite relevant to us as well. In terms of passenger figures, you'll probably have seen the pressure release we put out a couple of months back, so we were a very strong 2023, 6 million more passengers across our area than we did the year before, and we've seen on our Somerset routes are similar, not quite as much as we've had in the urban areas, but we've still seen some encouraging passenger numbers. In terms of punctuality, we hope we've sold a lot of issues from the 7th of April, certainly with Froome, where we've actually put on quite a few more journeys than we had, but we know that the new routes we've introduced are going to take some bedding in. They're extremely long, and if we managed to get from Bristol deep into some set without coming across half a dozen roadworks, that's usually quite a good day for us, unfortunately, the way it looks. But we've got a plan as determined to improve that further. We've got the prospective AI tool, and that collates all the GPS information from every bus, from every journey, and gives us some, as proven very effectively, giving us good, reliable time tables. So we think once we get to the second iteration in September, we'll improve things even further, and once we've gained some experience of running those routes. But generally, it looks so far like it's been well received, and they're running pretty well. We've had a few issues with in Glastonbury with Windmill Hill, which we've sorted with John now, which is good. So yeah, hopefully things will bedding over the summer, and then we'll come back into September with some new timetables. We'll probably be able to share what we'll do. Hopefully, just some minor tweaks, rather than having to do some major surgery, but let's see. But hopefully we'll have those in May and June to share, probably more like June. In terms of our reliability and wells, where most of our summer set routes are based, we've got a quite stable workforce. We have a fully staffed depot, and yeah, it's going well from that point of view. In terms of the challenges ahead, the end of the £2 fair is constantly on the horizon in theory in December. For the routes we run, which are mostly quite long distances. We're having to weigh up what we can take for granted, and a £2 fair to get from street to Bristol. It might be something that it doesn't work out as a affordable. The cost per mile is remarkably cheap, so we'll need to work out how we approach that, because that will be difficult. It's going to be a bit of a transition for everybody, depending on where it lands. If central support for bus fares continues, then great, because it's certainly playing a role in the passenger growth we've had in the area. Finally, just looking well into the future, in West of England, similar to Taunton, we've had some successful zebra bits. We're rolling out 92 buses, most of which are in Bristol, but the bit of interest is that we'll be putting 22 of them into Western Superman depot, and we'll be running them on a long distance route into Bristol, which you might be saying, well, what's that going to do with Somerset, which is fair, but it should give us some experience of running electric buses on long distance routes, which have quite similar characteristics for what we run in Somerset. I think that's a really... So far, nationally with our experience with electric buses, it's good not to go first and get some experience. I'd encourage you to come and give them a go on the X1 into Bristol when they arrive, hopefully in the course of next year, but hopefully we'll get some really good experience with a view to a future electrification in our routes based out of wells. So, yeah, that's my update. Are there any other operators? Or I think that maybe it's... Oh, don't forget sliferous couches, that's awesome. Yeah, sorry, oh dear, Richard. Oh, don't worry about us. Yeah, honestly, thanks, Lee, at least you remembered my name, it's fine. Right, anyway, sliferous couches, yeah, reiterating what the first guys said really. We're seeing slight growth across our network. However, the devil is in the detail and that goes alongside service changes that we've made and a couple of lots of sort of buses in our network, I suppose, that we've made in the changes in the last year across the 96, the 81 and the number one service. So, yeah, it's not as clear a picture as it would be had we not made those changes in the year on year. But we are seeing slight growth, I would suggest that the £2 backup has got to a plateau with us now and is probably making no real growth or impact at this point and I'd always say on the sort of bell of warning is I just wonder what will happen in the future when that comes out and the problems that we may face once that is taken away, even if it is done on a sliding scale. So, I think we found the plateau at that point with regards to that that effectiveness of new passengers and people wanting to use buses because of it. We have recently obviously released as you're aware the number one service and the new timetable on that on the 15th of April. That's gone as well as any timetable change and re sort of launch can do. We have had a few teething problems that have also linked and run on to the 667 as well but we are working on that and we'll be coming to John and the other guys probably with a couple of little timetable tweaks we'd like to make because there's a couple of timing issues. So, rather than obviously we're going to have to do it probably outside of the timetable change dates but it's really just tweaking the times in order to keep an effective service and shouldn't really have any other effect other than making the service more appealable to some of our school passengers. We've also recently re-employed a gentleman called Ian Cook who I also believe is on the call. He's joined us as our new services manager and specifically what Ian will be looking at the beginning of his tenure with us is punctuality. As you all know the road works have just been the state of the roads, the state of traffic etc have just been an absolute nightmare for us operators so specifically he's going to be working on punctuality with us in order to try and produce a better timetables across the board for our passengers and for our drivers as well because I can never forget those guys. They're working hard out there to try and keep us to keep the show running and running effectively and smoothly and they don't have to take some stick on the roads out there with the conditions that they are. So, Ian specifically I'd like to welcome him because he's going to be working hard on punctuality for us and timetable tweaks etc going forward but yeah that's about it. I'm also massively interested to see how the first guys get on locally with the Zebra and the electric buses because as Robert sort of said is not going first as a small operator it would be we want to be in that market but obviously it's a huge risk for us just being local but I think that if there's a Zebra 3 in the future we'll see how the first guys go in our area probably chat with them and see how we go and we'd love to be part of it if there's a Zebra 3 comes up and yeah we'd love to have investment in our area. Fantastic thank you Peter. I'd better ask about any other bus operators on the call before I forget anybody else. Yeah because that would be remiss of you and Richard. Yeah I mean all four. I'll take that as a no. I'm not going to take questions at this point because we've got a lot to get through so I'm going to go on to and if you do have questions for any particular operator I suggest you go direct to them so I'm going to move straight on to Action 8 which is the draft bus service improvement plan the BSIP for 2024 so I'm going to invite Natasha back to yeah present this. Hi Natasha. Hi thank you. I do have a presentation to share but just before we get into the BSIP review document for 2024 I do have a update now on the current BSIP and the £1.00 fair in Taunton so if it's okay I'll just cover that before I share this share my screen so so we just wanted to provide an update on the BSIP funded £1.00 fair scheme in Taunton as I think you're all aware as part of the BSIP we've been trialling low affairs in the Taunton town zone in the form of the £1.00 fair so the aim of that initiative was to really encourage bus travel, drive up patronage and aid in the recovery from Covid and the scheme has been really successful in terms of driving up that patronage I think there's been about 30% rise in bus use in Taunton which has been really good but as a result we've had to review the scheme and the fares and we do need to revise the fares slightly in order to continue maintaining a lower fair but ensuring that it remains sustainable within the BSIP funding available so with that in mind from the 1st of June from this year we will be revising the fares so we will be moving to a £1.50 for an adult single and an ATP for a child single and what we'll do is we will continue to monitor that and understand the impact of the revised fare and we'll review that again towards the end of the calendar year and then that will coincide with the end of the the government's national £2.00 fair scheme or the end as we know it at the moment and see what happens with that so in terms of the park and ride within Taunton just to clarify that that will be maintained at the £1.00 fair because it's part of a separate BSIP initiative but we really just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of the upcoming change and a press release will be following from our communications team later today. Thank you. Okay thank you Tasha. I will invite some questions from the board. Anybody got any questions? No. Surprising. Okay, you can see that. Okay so moving on to the actual BSIP review. So just to give a little bit of background and I think everyone's probably aware of it but just to make sure everyone completely understands so we have our original BSIP was produced in 2021 and that was in response to the government's national birth strategy bus back better and we had to set out our high level ambition for public transport in the county and bid for a share of the funding that was available at the time. So we then did a high level review of that BSIP in 2022 which was just updated slightly to reflect the funding that had been allocated. We were due to review again in 2023 but that was postponed at the request of the DFT who asked us to wait until they had revised their guidance and released the new guidance. So that guidance was released at the beginning of this year and that has required local transport authorities to review their BSIPs again in line with the DFT requirements and those need to be submitted and published by the 12th of June. So the DFT being very clear that this particular review is not a new bidding document. There's no new funding available at this stage but we do have to review the BSIP and submit it in order to release the final tranche of BSIP funding that we've been allocated. So we know what we're getting for 24-25 but in order to have that released to us we need to complete the review and submit that on time. So that's what's happening there. In terms of the BSIP review there's three key themes and the first one is around updating our baseline to reflect the 23-24 position so where we've come from to where we are now. Setting out the improvement program for 24-25 so looking at what we've been able to deliver with our BSIP funding and what we are still going to deliver with that by the end of March 25 and then a section on our plans and ambitions for 2025 and beyond and that has to be linked to our local transport plans so that they're both aligned and trying to achieve the same goals and visions. And then just to give a an overview of the process so what we've done to date and what we we still need to do. So we've had consultation with operators so we've met with the larger operators across the county, talked to them about the ambition and proposals and had feedback on what we should be including in the BSIP. We've consulted with the bus passenger representatives and we've done that through the Somerset Bus Partnership and also through the bus user and stakeholder group where we did a presentation and gathered feedback there. Obviously now we're we're consulting with the Bus Advisory Board through today's meeting and we'll gather feedback at the end of the presentation and then we'll be asking for letters of support from operators to support the BSIP that we will be submitting but we'll follow that up after this meeting. And then once we've had feedback from today and we've made some final changes any final changes to the BSIP we will be taking that forward to our planning and transport subcommittee on the 23rd of May for formal approval. And then once that's done and completed we will be submitting that to the DFT by the deadline of the 12th of June. And alongside the BSIP process we also need to complete bus connectivity assessments so the DFT have recently produced guidance on what they require from bus connectivity assessments and they are also due in on the 12th of June so the same day as the BSIP. So we're just working our way through the guidance at the moment understanding what was required and we will be contacting operators shortly to request any outstanding data that we need so some of it we've probably already got through the BSIP process but there may be some gaps in data so don't be surprised if we contact you in the next couple of weeks asking for more information please. Okay so that covers going on the process and what we've been doing and then I'll go into a little more detail around the BSIP review document then. That was circulated with the agenda so you should have all seen a copy of that document so I'm not proposing to go into masses of detail around the content but I'm just going to cover each section and what we what we've covered under those those areas. So firstly just to clarify that the version that came out with the agenda is a Word document so it's not the final kind of polished version it's a version we've produced in Word so that we can make changes to it before it goes to our design team. What we've done is we've tried to reduce the length of the document so the DFT have asked us to try and make the BSIP more concise where possible so it is still a long document but it is a lot shorter than the original version so we've tried where possible to condense things down and still complying with the requirements from the DFT guidances to what they want to see in our BSIPs. You'll note from the draft version that there are elements that have got highlight in it and that's just where we're waiting for facts and figures and we'll need to make those final changes so the general principles and proposals within the document won't actually change significantly but there will be some final amendments to make sure everything is accurate and correct before we send it through to the design team and they will hopefully then make it look a much more professional document more along the lines of the original BSIP we submitted. So under section one we just to give an overview of what's going to be in there so we'll have the full word from our lead member Richard and we've got that so we've just got to add that into the document. We will produce the executive summary once documents finish just to give that overview of what the document is covering and then section one also talks about our bus vision and that's linked very much to our local transport plan emerging vision and also the national bus strategy aims so that it's all aligned. Then section two that covers our current bus offer so we have there set out the challenges with operating services within Somerset and a rural authority. We've highlighted the progress we've made particularly around passenger numbers and the recovery from COVID. The improvements in our bus fleets across the county so whilst we may not have changed the age of or overall average age of the fleet the actual makeup within the bus fleet has really improved and we're seeing the much older vehicles having moved out of the county and we're getting much more Euro 5 and a lot more Euro 6 engines operating on our services and also the improvement in the move to contactless so we're able to provide contactless options across all of the services we've seen that there's been a shift with how people pay for their tickets so many more passengers are paying by contactless rather than cash on the bus. This section also includes a summary of the results from our recent bus passenger survey highlighting things that are working well things that are maybe not so geared and that we need to address through the B-SIP. We've also covered the makeup of the Somerset bus network showing the proportion of commercial routes and also subsidized routes and where they operate within the county and then we've also conducted a little activity around strengths and weaknesses of the current offer so identifying those DFT B-SIP goals and kind of where we're doing well and where we've got some best practice and also where there are some weaknesses and that gives us those opportunities to develop that within the B-SIP. Okay section three that's the improvement program for 24/25 so in here we've set out what we've achieved through the B-SIP to date so what we've already delivered what's up and running where things are going well and where we've got some really good best practice that we can we can use for the future and also where we've got some lessons learnt and we'll apply that to our future proposals and schemes for the B-SIP and then there's a section on what we've still got planned with the B-SIP funding and so what we will deliver by March 2025 and then there's also aside from the B-SIP funding there's other things that we've achieved outside of that or that we will achieve and that's obviously the contactless payments I talked about the two fixed timetable change dates per year we've got QR codes on bus bus service shelters in Taunton and Yoval that have been rolled out and then we'll have the Zebra too so whilst that's still government funding it's outside of B-SIP so we've noted that in here as well and then moving on to section four also this is the section which sets out the ambition for 2025 and beyond so what we've done here is we've drawn on the original B-SIP documents so where we didn't have funding to deliver everything we'd hoped to do we've retained that ambition and then we've worked on that and developed it further so it's still relevant to what we want to achieve we've incorporated the feedback from key stakeholders to make sure that's reflected in our ambition as well and then we've linked all of that to our emerging local transport plan vision and also the TFT requirements to make sure we're covering what's required from there and I think it's really important to point out at this stage that that section on the ambition is all subject to securing additional funding from government so without that additional funding we won't be able to deliver those proposals they'll still remain our kind of ambition for the future so it's really important that we can try and secure that additional funding to be able to deliver some of this when those opportunities arise and then this section also includes a timeline so a bit more of a visual to show what our four-year plan is in terms of each of those proposals and when we'll be delivering things if we get funding and also the longer term overarching 10-year plan as well that just sets out a bit more clearly so you can see what we we would hope to achieve and then under section five we've got the targets performance and monitoring so we have our original BCP targets set out in that document and we've gone through and reviewed them and updated them where possible sharing kind of what we've been doing to monitor them and what the activity and results the performances against each of those you'll note that obviously some of those schemes were not funded so those targets aren't achievable but we've made notes against those and explained where we're doing things slightly differently or where it's just not possible and alongside all of this target performing performance and monitoring we'll have those bus connectivity assessments I referred to earlier and that will become an annual activity that the DFT will expect us to submit and then also around performance and monitoring the DFT are reviewing future arrangements and so that's yet to be determined but we are anticipating new guidance coming out shortly so once we've got that guidance we'll review what we need to put in in terms of our next basic review potentially next year and then the final section is section six now we understand that that section will be the the kind of part of the document that's used by Treasury to look at their future spending review and work at how much funding is needed in the future across the whole country to deliver everybody's ambition so they'll be using that in terms of budget setting and what we've been asked to do is to put indicative costs in where we where we know them so what we've done is for each scheme we've input a cost based on the information we have available and looking at inflation and the kind of other other things that might impact those costs we understand that there will be some further guidance due very shortly from the DFT on this section so hopefully that will be very shortly because obviously we've got a tight deadline to meet but I think what will come from that is they will just want us to tweak the presentation of this section so that everyone's doing the same thing so we'll wait to see what comes out on that and the DFT have asked us to make sure that our ambition is on par with the original B-SIP and I think we are doing that we are matching what we're asking for in the the first round of B-SIP and they anticipate another review in 2025 so I think at that point we'll probably have that opportunity to then refine our proposals and the costs in more detail and we'll be able to link that more closely to the local transport plan because by that point we should have a much more evolved document either completed or nearing completion at that point and so yeah that gives a quick overview as to the document that we've provided and now we'd really like to just give an opportunity for people to ask questions, provide any comments or feedback we're looking to see if we've got general support for the B-SIP document and like I said we'll be asking operators for letters of support as well so thank you. Can I just say before I bring in some questioners it looks like we've got a few already that I think that you've done some fantastic work on this it's a very clear document and it sets everything out very specifically and I just think your team has to be commended on the work that you've done on this so I'll go to David Redgewell first of all thank you Richard so there's a few points I'd like to raise and first of all with the connectivity document the Department for Transport is putting emphasis on making sure buses don't stop at the borders and the CPTs also issued some guidance on that which I was reading very clearly with the other local authority in the area earlier this week so I understand the and I agree that working with the rest of the Somerset through Wecker and or Somerset is very good but we do need to make sure that we particularly encompass the network into Dorset of Yoville which is very much one network and again into Devon and routes like the 24 which is run by Southwest coaches is Sister Company Beeline between Salisbury and Froome to make sure that this and Froome up to Chippernum to make sure we are making sure that the region is is well connected obviously we'd like to see the 77 scrapped and become 377 so we've got connectivity between Bristol and Yoville as the train service is quite sparse on that route um on the other issues we need to understand where we are with first group um and uh Southwest coaches group and and stage coach and go ahead we're not on the call today uh where we are with uh drivers because the DFT is asking about staffing and then what we're doing to recruit staffing um again in adjacent local sites we talk about more advertising on bus stops and shelters again to make it clear that we need to have um bus drivers uh maintenance staff cleaning staff I think we need to bottom out with first the issue of Yoville bus depot uh the outstation we don't seem to have reached the um the conclusion to that yet um and then we can't do anything on this today but once we know the new the new um police and crime commissioner is um we need to understand what the community safety partnerships are around our bus stations and I'm very grateful to Richard and to um Bill uh for keeping all the CTCTV working and that was giving me some sleepless nights with safety at Wells for instance uh we passed here so we need to go through that and then on disability we do need to look carefully at this Richard at how we are picking up drop curves and castle curves and what our ambition uh and I I come back to another bit in the guidance about integration with National Express and Mega Bus and uh rail nights nice to see Richard Gibson from cross country trains on this call but we need to make sure that the rail bus integration is good and that reminds me of Castle Carey where it's not good for wheelchair Natasha to be put onto a grass first to catch the number one uh into Shepton Mallet so I think we need to go through that Kefi Mark Harper as long as he's in position he will be I think quite a bit longer yet um is very keen on disability there is a disability in the equality's uh plan at the department um we are having some problems with keeping our rail replacement services by first uh fully accessible at the moment that's something I'm taking up with the National Board um but I think equality's and disability is something the mark takes very seriously and then on the finance well Louise Haig if she's the minister is uh such a state is going to change things um we are going to have a four year spending review in November and we're also looking at um legislation in the first hundred days to look at re-regulation of the bus industry through franchising and re-nationalization of the rail network over five years so they've had I'm going to stop you there because there's there's quite a there's a quite a lot you've asked um yeah my final point Richard was to um was to say that obviously I think we need to rob lobby regionly to make sure that we get the best results of the spending review um so that's very important for the southward region thanks you Richard okay thanks thanks David and um on the CCTV I might point out that we've worked with partnerships of the the town councils across the region to um to to keep that running so I think a lot of thanks to the to the town councils on on that uh but I'll pass over to Natasha to try and digest some of some of those points and yeah I think I would just say yep some good points there thank you for raising those I have noted them as we've been going through and yeah we will take those on board and consider they thank you okay thank you David um I'll go on to um councilman cell Dave yep thank you Richard um and thank you Natasha um for the report and the presentation which was helpful in putting it into context um I've got a yeah some comments and a suggestion um now possibly I'm missing something but um I realized that when reading through that I didn't actually understand what was the core bus network I don't think it's made clear in the document what is regarded as the as the core network and I think that would be would be helpful and I'm particularly raising that because I think it's well it's become apparent to me that there are clearly services outside of the the core network which haven't been receiving the same attention and I I believe that that needs to be made um clear in the uh the plan because it feels like some routes are just sort of slipping through and um uh well to be honest they're they're declining um and continuing to decline um and you won't be surprised to hear that the the route I've got in mind is the 25 but I you know I'm sure there must be others in the similar circumstances elsewhere in the uh in Somerset now it particularly occurred to me in section four on page 52 uh deliverable three um and I and I was looking at that and it's referring to the core network and how that's going to be provided and some enhancements and as I say those those that service is not provided on all routes and so it struck me that what appears to be needed is for a reference to secondary routes uh to be to be made so secondary routes for small towns with rural feeder services um now I hope they would be supported and developed but you know whatever wording um is felt best to go alongside them whether it's just providing secondary routes for small towns with rural feeder services uh but I strongly feel that they need some attention which they're they're not getting and at the moment they're declining and um you know how far will that decline go uh some of us think that that decline has already gone too far okay thank you thank you um Dave um Natasha um yes thank you and again yes and good points raised there I think in terms of the core network I think we need to do some work on that and that will develop in kind of alongside the local transport plan and the place-based solutions which will help define what the core network should be or where it should be serving and where like you say we have those secondary routes so we want to make sure that whatever we develop there is reflected in the local transport plan so hopefully over the next year that will start to emerge and we'll be able to define that a lot better okay thank you I've got Tony Reese I'm totally sure if he's a board member but um I'll um indulge Tony anyway yes he is Richard he's sorry apologies Tony I've not got the list of people in front of me so um I have a specific question about QR codes in Tornton um David Norvie says there are none anywhere near where he lives the railway station in Kilkenny um but on a more general note I'd like to say again a big thank you to Natasha and the team for producing that report it is a very good summary of where we are it is the sort of thing that we have asked for from this meeting so something less detailed and less polished would be good to share at each of these meetings as to how we're actually doing on the enhanced partnership for instance um I was surprised to hear you say we haven't actually changed the age of buses because I would have thought the new buses running the park and ride and the buses that they've released to be used elsewhere in Somerset um would in fact reduce the average age of buses and since it was a plan right at the beginning it would be good if we could actually have some sort of responses to where we are what the figure is if you haven't the time for it there are enthusiast groups all over Somerset who could probably tell you down to the minute the actual age of every bus not only where it is and how long it's been since it was built but where it's been in between um so I'm quite sure if we ask the right people um first the operators ought to produce this information but if we want to we could actually suggest how we're actually developing I was sorry to see from James that the um regularity the timeliness and the um number of buses cancelled doesn't seem to be decreasing I'm glad to hear they're working on it but we would like I think as users we would like this meeting to be able to say what what has happened what good things have happened what bad things have happened and what we're doing about them for instance last week we had new buses on the 68 bus and I think some of some of its other bus routes and taking wheelchairs this is incredibly important for the buses that communicate with the station it would have been much I would have been much happier if this had been mentioned at the last meeting we'd had three months to consider it make the publicity available have it as a major transport event last week and I hope we still can have a major event that we'd plan something that says look we now have a link to the bus station link to the railway stations that is supportive of those who need wheelchair access and it's things like that but I think this meeting can be involved in actually saying we need to do these things I've asked a couple of times and I'm glad to see it's in the review there when we will get the new demand responsive services at Somerton and Somerton hub I've read a lot about DRC services how many of them have failed and the ones that were successful were the ones they spent three months before implementation talking to people having events in local villages inviting people into the center to see the facility talk to the people who will be taking the requests talk to the drivers getting to know them so that when we actually introduce it it's done with a wave of publicity we're trying to attract new people onto buses new younger people who need these DRT services I always say slinky is one of Somerset's best kept secrets sorry I'll finish in a moment Somerset is one of Slinky is one of Somerset's best kept secrets with this new mobility hub as you say we need to try it your report shows lots of things you'll do to review it but the review and the planning needs to include all the things we're going to do before we get there as a date there of March next year I'm hoping that's good and it won't get delayed but as soon as you're sure of it we need to start publicizing it and those are the sort of things we hope will happen at this meeting in future I'd like to see a plan for the new year over bus station can we invite architects schools to draw up new plans they ought to be written into the planning rules for the bus station before the site is sold not after it's done and a new owner has the feeling that he's going to build masses of houses it needs to be written in now but there is a plan for the new year over bus station that will come up see on your plan it says 2029 I would hope it's sooner than that if I and again thank you thank you Tony um I will get um Natasha to some sorry there's somebody's got their mic on so that's better Natasha um just quickly on a couple of those points um yes so I think yeah again all good points and we will we will try and produce a summaries and give much more kind of regular updates in the meetings and we do welcome suggestions on what you'd like to see at the meeting so yeah please feel free to send those through to us um in terms of vehicle aids there is information in the b-sit documents so we have collated that from operators and yes I think whilst whilst the actual average age plus hopefully it hasn't changed which we were expecting to see the actual makeup like I say has improved and we're seeing that the older kind of more polluting vehicles have been removed from from the network and we've now got kind of a lot more euro six they might be still kind of older vehicles but they're actually euro six engines so much cleaner uh kind of technology and reducing the carbon emissions in the network which is really good um and yeah we'll try and keep you as updated as we can with things as and when they they come to fruition thank you hey thank you and i've got peter thanks Richard and thanks to his team and specifically Natasha for the huge amount of work which has gone in into this document um one does have to question the extent to which it's going to be applied because uh ever since Boris disappeared after the scene the government doesn't seem to be allocating any significant investment extra investment to buses and if there is a change of government um it's going to be all about bus franchising and we in the Somerset bus partnership have done a lot of work a lot of work on bus franchising which as soon as it becomes relevant to Somerset we'd very much like to share with you um a concern which i'm sure you and Somerset share as well um and the bus operators as well is that we've introduced a one pound fare um in taunton as part of the b-zip but the bus priority lanes and especially the taunton mobility hub haven't uh yet been delivered they are slowly coming through the pipeline um but it's likely that one pound fare might well is going to disappear before we see those um we're not sure what's going to happen um in march of next year so there seems to be a lack of coordination by the very nature of these b-zip allocations um going on with trying to improve and turn to turn taunton into a bus town and i one just has to hope that the government planning of investment in buses will take a longer term view than what we've seen um with b-zip this this time um i echo um the comments that david as david dreadful has made about the importance of cross boundary um we know that's important around the whole of the perimeter of uh the county quite how that fits into core roots i don't know but i'm sure it's something that um Natasha and her colleagues will be looking at but um some of the most important roots in Somerset are cross boundary thank you thank you Richard thank you peter um you know we do take it on board um it's it's not necessarily quite all that simple just to um bung a bus route in um so i i kind of you know we've been working hard on on various various um various things simultaneously um but things don't always just appear as if by magic there's a lot of work that goes behind these things um so we we do work hard on on trying to do a joined up um holistic look at things um but but we have to we have to take time where where it's necessary um i'll just bring Natasha back in one more time i think um yeah thank you and again thank you peter for your comments and like you say we will bear in mind those cross boundary uh services and how they fit into the wider core network once we're reviewing that as well so thank you excellent well that was a good uh good discussion there i think and um i just say i really appreciate the work that um Natasha and her team have put into this um this um be set 2024 document it's um i think it reads really well um which is i think will be a determining factor in in the future right i'll go on to um 0.9 which is uh which is you peter again uh so this is an update from the bus users and stakeholder groups um so i'll i'll leave it with you p thank you thank you very much um again i'd just like to reiterate um uh real appreciation to first south and first west of england for um getting into it uh love with us as has been alluded to um we do have a meeting um with uh a management team at first south on friday to talk about the much discussed 25 and 28 routes and to see what steps between us we might be able to agree as being positive next steps um that's all very encouraging um and i think has come out of the enhanced partnership approach and has been very much encouraged by uh sonosec council um particularly by john parrot so consultation is ongoing and it's developing um we've just gone through one of our uh twice yearly timetable changes it has to be said and it has been said that it was particularly confusing this time especially in the north of sonosec with buses emanating out of bath and breastel changing on the seventh and the eighth and then elsewhere in sonosec on the 13th and 14th hopefully that will be overcome going forward um it just makes it a um an extra confusion to bus users who are already somewhat confused by the nature of um these bus timetable changes because when they go to the bus stop when a bus user goes to the bus stop they discover that the bus times are not accurate and so on the six seventh eighth or the thirteenth or the thirteenth or the fourteenth of september they go to the bus stop and unless it's southwest coaches who have done an exceptional job in changing their bus times none of the bus time tables at bus stops are accurate no there is no other transport mode at the point of departure accepts that it's okay to show incorrect times and the bus industry doesn't necessarily accept it generally in wecker nearly all the bus stops have those bus times changed on the date or within seven days of the timetable change they should be changed at the time that those bus times are in place and the wecker method is that they charge bus operators a cost for for changing it said to say that the Somerset approach is just to accept it's a problem it's a problem for bus users the fact that most of our bus timetables on bus stops are inaccurate often with broken timetable cases or no timetable cases it's just something that Somerset residents have to put up with well I don't think it's acceptable and I don't think bus users think it's acceptable and I don't think Somerset Council should think it's acceptable I do acknowledge that buses the Somerset are currently very working very hard to get out timetables now some two weeks after the event but they're they're recognizing the importance of it first west of England apart from on the 126 route haven't yet changed their bus timetables and it's simply not couldn't have and then we look at printed bus timetables that people can have now it's probably the minority but it's still some 20 percent of bus users who rely on printed bus timetables Richard Wilkins was at one of our bus stalls and saw people really appreciative that we were giving out bus timetables printed timetables and all credit to buses buses of Somerset they this time had got their bus time paid table booklets printed in time only just but they were there printed in time and we were distributing them at our bus stalls across Somerset and credit to to first west of England on some of their key routes they've also printed bus timetables but the reality is a lot of bus users can't get or don't get printed bus timetables and it is actually those who are economically and socially disadvantaged often who are the ones who are most dependent on buses are most dependent on bus timetables and it's it's a former social exclusion that Somerset Council and I have to say the bus operators in general don't produce bus timetables printed bus timetables and don't put them at bus stops and it is something we really do need to address and find a way of funding it I appreciate Somerset now is saying it can't afford to do anything over and above its absolute essentials but there are ways of funding this by going to bus operators it is the way that west of England combined authority does it we need to find a solution to this problem one other issue I'd like to raise and it has been only touched on so far is Yoval bus station now this is a really big issue Linda Snelling and I have talked to prospective candidates MPs, councillors, I spoken to the Minister of Transport about this and we've talked to a lot of people in Yoval too this is an important issue and it's also an important issue for bus operators I'm led to believe that the solution is now in Somerset Council's hands and I would have thought that it would have been appropriate for a statement to have been made at this bus advisory board about the Somerset about the Yoval bus station we certainly do need information about it we need to we would like to be consulted by Somerset Council I hope Richard will confirm that we will be consulted because this is an important regional hub not just for Somerset but for Dorset as well and we need some clarity as to what is going to happen in the redevelopment of that part of Yoval and particularly the bus station so thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you it's it is really useful that bus users are now listened to and given a voice some might feel too strong a voice I hope that's not the view but thank you for the opportunity and I'm glad we've had the opportunity to raise two really important issues for bus users and particularly bus users in Yoval as well thank you Richard thank you yeah right sorry thank you Peter okay I think there's been lots of discussion over Yoval bus station and we've given a lot of answers that we can at the moment I'm not going to go over it again and when we do have more to say about it of course we will but there's a lot of factors in that I'm going to move to Action number 10 which is any other business so I've got Tony thank you Richard um yes I would like to say a lot more about Yoval bus station but we don't need to say it here we have a month to sort the problem and it needs sorting I would like to raise one other issue which I have mentioned before but it comes up again and again it's come up this week a major road in Yoval is due to be shut possibly for up to three months starting yesterday according to the roadworks notice now again the first we hear of it is that somebody sees the roadworks notice and we're told the road is going to be shut I don't believe anybody has talked to the bus operators I don't believe anybody thought about talking to us as the users when this road was going to be shut Henford Hill is due to be closed it's an unspecified period but the roadworks statement says from yesterday to the middle of July I think it is we really need to be in on these discussions before these decisions are made the operators need to be involved and the users need to have a way of discussing with whoever is planning roadworks to be able to say this is not acceptable or is there a way around it can buses be allowed through or whatever so can I once again ask that a plan is set up so that when roadworks are planned we are involved and particularly the bus operators are involved right I'm going to bring John in on that point are you there John yeah I'll there Richard yeah so certainly we'll pick this up with the roadworks team because we should be getting notifications of all the roadworks that happen and we should be sending those out to operators in advance so I'll check Henford Hill to see what the issue is there and whether that was missed and why it was missed if that's the case and operators don't know in terms of obviously advising people earlier we will have to talk to roadworks team about how we can do that and I think Jonathan has been on certainly one of the bus partnership calls Tony before I think to discuss this but we'll have another look at that to see whether or not they can give more advance warning and I don't see why we couldn't send the bus partnership copies of road closure notices as we get them some of them come in very late literally we will obviously get emergency closures and things like that some of them do come in obviously with a lot more notice I don't see why they couldn't be shared with the bus partnership particularly I'll check that with the roadworks team but let's see if we can improve that notification a bit certainly but I'll look into Henford Hill and find out whether we got information out to operators and if we didn't why we didn't so I'll look at that thank you thanks John and David thank you Richard so a few points I want to raise we had a meeting the other evening with young people from across the Bristol and across Somerset area first were there but the issues they raised was interesting some of the issues they raised was about and social behavior on the late night buses and issues around cleanliness was another point they made Richard which was very interesting these wishes around 376 that corridor and the path the Bathwells corridor at Taunton and Bridgewater the other thing they they raised was young safety of the local trains which was and again that applied to the Bristol Taunton line in particular the local service not the ones that Richard Gibson runs young city ones and that was also of concern they also talked a bit about drugs on the local transport network which appears to be in the group wider Somerset area but also about revenue protection and first group of PLC is rolling this out across their network and they thought the enforcement of some of the revenue protection officers was quite strong I think it might be worth talking Richard to first well some west and maybe south as to what the revenue protection rollout is going to be like in Somerset and how that's going to work pretty on those core networks as piece of crime commissioner and issues around safety on buses is very much in the sector state's mind so those were some of the issues the other thing i'm picking up from passengers who see Somerset is one county and is one county so glossure is it's one county three systems are government in it three authorities but we have first west of England and first south they're all first PLC companies we've got some rider tickets west of England plus but you can't buy on a Somerset vehicle well if i'm staying at Breen i don't know i just want to use the buses and they're all they've all got first on the side and they all say first group and the passengers don't understand this and can we just sort this ticketing system out to make sure that you don't have to pay £2 £2 £2 to get across Somerset when there are tickets that cover a Somerset on first group and then on ticketing we need to try and pick up the issue with south west coaches and their subsidiary beeline and the other operators so see we can create a county-wide ticket when tourism is on our our screen also won the works with the rail system as well on the membership today's meeting's interesting i think there's a lot of Somerset bus partnership members are appointed on here are no longer members so i think that needs a quick review like David Nordy have taken a major role there and then on the oval bus station all i'm going to ask is yeah we've got a month it's been ITN it's been all in national news but Dorset i repaired it it's a local election in Dorset but we do need to talk to Dorset they were quite friendly the other night about sitting down with you Richard and trying to find a solution from Dorset council as was Peter McNaughton as well and first rail so i think there needs as i said to BRL's some meeting after the Dorset elections to try and resolve how we keep the overall operating at the moment with every council's been hollowed out we just need to work in partnership find ways forward and run this a new Somerset and work with the communities but that's what i that's my point but community safety can we make sure on the b-set that we talked to young Somerset and with the north as well because that was a fascinating meeting with sorry organized it but Rosa goes to those meetings as well and young Somerset and the student we were talking about earlier on is very much engaged in all of this and we need to understand their views and their safety thank you Richard right thank you David i'll be interested if James or Robert want to come in on on the ticketing aspect very fair whilst you've been talking we've been talking in the background um so yeah we're a bit surprised by that so we've already actually um picked it up and we'll get it sorted that's fantastic thank you for raising thank you James thank you James and actually this is what this board meeting is all about is finding solutions like this and let's brilliantly raise that um thank you just on that point Richard i think it has been mentioned two or three times i think today yes we do have two separate companies operating Somerset but they are both first bus and at the end of the day the customer doesn't see any difference so ultimately we need to be acting and operating as one operator not two separate companies um and we will do everything we need to to make sure that happens um and this is one example of that so anything else where that's not being seen joined up please do um do let myself or Rob or anybody else know in term we'll rectify it and fantastic to hear about bring your work load up but there is some you could help us with um James and Rob we used to have a very good railway placement service with full accessibility with disabled people that Richard is not happening at the moment so can we look at that with the first companies and the council because they've been involved in making sure these blockades are planned and disabled people can travel and not let it stations um there are some cases and i wonder if we could Devon and Coma do it quite well i think we need local authority engagement in it to make sure that the vehicles are low floor and we and Somerset and i think John Parry did a lot of work is in the past to make sure that our network and into Wekeland with our rail corridors that we got a fully accessible transport network when we can't run the trains and that's of course in the hands of first and cross country thanks Richard. Okay thanks thanks for bringing that up actually David I think that that's a discussion that we will have to have James and Robert and John so we'll arrange something soon to see what we can do there. Okay I think I think that brings us to the end really so the date of the next meeting is scheduled for the 25th of June 2024 and it's good to hear from you all and it's great to see that we're working as one big sort of team on these issues now i think there's been a lot of improvement made across the board actually but both from operators and the way in which we engage both as a council and as a Somerset Buss partnership so i'd just like to say thank thank you everybody for attending and we will see you in at the end of June. Thank you. Thanks everyone. Take care. Thank you. Thank you Richard. a lot of the time. Thank you. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. a lot of the time. You [BLANK_AUDIO]