Your views on our proposal to review bus services supported by the County Council

Overview

Norfolk County Council plays a huge part in people’s lives – ensuring children and young people have the best start in life, protecting vulnerable people, maintaining a safe road system and helping to create a thriving economy.  We’ll continue to spend over a billion pounds every year providing public services that you, your family and friends use every day.

Norfolk is facing some big challenges though.  Our population is growing, people are generally living longer and the type of services that people need is changing.  And as you know, the cost of living is going up.  As things become more expensive we also have higher costs, and the amount of money we have coming in isn’t keeping up.  At the same time the grant that central government gives us has fallen by £189 million since 2011 and is expected to fall to zero by 2021.

Even though we are proposing to increase council tax next year, the amount of money we hope to raise wouldn’t be enough to balance our budget.  This means we have to make some difficult decisions about how we spend your money.

Since 2011 we have saved £334 million.  However, we now need to save a further £125 million by 2021.  We currently spend £3.1 million every year on bus subsidies and community transport grants.  We fund these bus services because they are important to the communities and passengers who use them.

We are proposing to carry out a review of the money we give to bus companies to subsidise bus routes and the grants we give to community transport operators, with a view to saving £0.5 million in 2018/19.

We want to look at whether we could get better value for money without there being a noticeable impact on passengers.  However it is likely that we would need to prioritise which services we continue to support in order to save some of this money.

Why your views matter

We want your views on our proposal to review the money we spend on bus subsidies and community transport grants.  Your views will help us to decide whether we should review how we spend this money.

If we decide to go ahead with this review, our proposal is to prioritise supporting bus services which help people get to and from work and to essential services, such as to healthcare appointments and to go food shopping, and where there are no other transport options available.  We want to know what you think of our proposal to prioritise these services.

We will feed back the findings from our consultation to our county councillors as part of the evidence they will use to help them come to a decision about our proposals.

Find out more and have your say online by clicking on the feedback form below.

If you need a copy of this consultation document on paper or in a different format please email haveyoursay@norfolk.gov.uk

What happens next

We will take a report about the findings to this consultation to our Environment, Development and Transport Committee on 19 January 2018.  The report will feedback what people have told us about the potential impact of our proposal.  The feedback will also be reported at Full Council on 12 February 2018.  Members will use this as part of the evidence they take into account when making a decision about what savings to make.