Thank you for your e-mail requesting information under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 / Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

We will proceed with the request which we received today. It is our
intention to have the information delivered to you as soon as possible
otherwise within the statutory 20 working days.

In consideration of the request, which may be subject to any exemptions/
exceptions the Council may rely on to refuse the request, some of which
are absolute and some of which only apply where the public interest in
maintaining the exemption/exception outweighs that in disclosing the
information.

Please note that should you be requesting information under the
Environmental Information Regulations although we provide free access to a
wide range of information through our website, access to any public
registers which we hold and for inspecting information at our offices, we
are allowed to charge you a reasonable fee for providing certain
information.  If applicable, we will issue you with a fee notice.  This
will detail the tasks involved in responding to the request, and
associated costs.  Further information is available on the EIR page of
Bedford Borough Council’s website at the following link:

[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...

Please note that once a response has been forwarded to you an anonymised
summary of all requests appear on the Bedford Borough website at the
following link:

[2]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...
Our current practise is that the information will be available to view on
the web for 2 years.

Any future correspondence you may have with the Council in relation to
this matter should be emailed to [3][Bedford Borough Council request email] .

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References

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3. mailto:[Bedford Borough Council request email]

Bedford BC - OFFICIAL-Unsecure

Dear Mr Todd,

Request pursuant to Environmental Information Regulations Act 2004 –
Request No.12066

Thank you for your request for information about bus service provisions,
which we received on 20^th March 2018. Your request has been considered
under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

Please see your request and our response below

1.    What is the agreed total budget for supported bus services in the
fiscal year 2018/19

Please find information attached in the spreadsheet.

2. What was the total spend for supported bus services in the fiscal year
2017/18?
Please find information attached in the spreadsheet.

3. What was the total spend for supported bus services in the fiscal year
2016/17?

Please find information attached in the spreadsheet.

4. How many and which supported routes are likely to have cuts in services
in the fiscal year 2018/19 (for example loss of weekend or evening
services)?
There is a possibility that two services may face cuts during 2018/9.
Service 41 may face a reduction in frequency whilst service 29 may be
withdrawn due to lack of usage. Bedford Borough Council are endeavouring
to avoid cuts to supported bus services and try to employ sympathetic cuts
when they are absolutely necessary.

5. How many and which supported routes have had cuts in services in the
fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18 (for example loss of weekend or evening
services), listed for each year?
2016/7 - No cuts were made by Bedford Borough Council. Stagecoach took a
commercial decision and withdrew service 52 as it was not viable.

2017/8 - No cuts were made by Bedford Borough Council. Cuts to funding
made by neighbouring Central Bedfordshire Council did have an impact
however. Reduction in funding over the boundary caused Stagecoach to
review their Sunday service provision on routes 71/72/73/81. They were
deemed unviable and were withdrawn as a result.

Bedford Borough Council facing budget pressures worked in partnership with
Stagecoach to commercialise the majority of the evening and Sunday
services on the Bedford town network. As a result there was a seamless
transition with the same timetables and most services becoming commercial
and BBC providing significantly less support.

6. How many and which supported routes are likely to be completely
withdrawn in the fiscal year 2018/19?
As noted in Q4 above, service 29 is likely to be withdrawn completely.
This is a Thursdays only service that operates just one journey. Having
monitored usage it is clearly not required.

7. How many and which supported routes have been completely withdrawn in
the fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18, listed for each year?
One - Service 52 during 2016/7; withdrawn by the operator. None during
2017/8.

8. How many and which of the previously supported routes have been taken
on commercially?
Six - As noted in Q5 above, services 2, 3, 5, 6, 9 and 10 have been taken
on commercially, previously supported evenings and Sundays (services 2, 5
and 6 evenings and Sundays, and services 3, 9 and 10 supported purely on
Sundays).

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.  For
further information regarding Re-use of Public Sector Information please
see the following link
[1]http://www.bedford.gov.uk/council_and_de...

If you are unhappy with the way the authority has handled your request,
you may ask for an internal review. Please contact Barbara Morris,
Assistant Chief Executive, (Law & Governance), email:
[2][email address] who will arrange an internal review of
your case.  Under Regulation 11(2) this needs to be done no later than 40
working days after the date of this letter.  If you are not content with
the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly
to the Information Commissioner for a decision.

The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

[3]www.ico.gov.uk          

Yours sincerely

Andrea Bechtle

FOI & EIR Officer - Environment

Bedford Borough Council

Room 336, Borough Hall, Cauldwell Street, Bedford, MK429AP

(01234) 718243 (ext 47243)
‘Bedford Borough Council - Working with our partners to make the borough a
better place to live, work and visit.’

From: Chris Todd [[4]mailto:[FOI #472336 email]]

Sent: 20 March 2018 15:51

To: Freedom of Information

Subject: Freedom of Information request - Bus service provision

Dear Bedford Borough Council,

I am gathering information on bus and public transport provision as part
of the Save our Buses campaign, which maps cuts to bus services across the
country. We know that the Government has made deep cuts to local authority
budgets, and that this is having an effect on the provision of local bus
services. We would like to gather a national picture of bus cuts, so that
we can explain to central Government exactly how their decisions are
having an impact across the country.

My questions are as follows (in each case I am only after the information
for your authority):

1. What is the agreed total budget for supported bus services in the
fiscal year 2018/19

2. What was the total spend for supported bus services in the fiscal year
2017/18?

3. What was the total spend for supported bus services in the fiscal year
2016/17?

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

4. How many and which supported routes are likely to have cuts in services
in the fiscal year 2018/19 (for example loss of weekend or evening
services)?

5. How many and which supported routes have had cuts in services in the
fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18 (for example loss of weekend or evening
services), listed for each year?

6. How many and which supported routes are likely to be completely
withdrawn in the fiscal year 2018/19?

7. How many and which supported routes have been completely withdrawn in
the fiscal years 2016/17 and 2017/18, listed for each year?

8. How many and which of the previously supported routes have been taken
on commercially?

Our campaign also seeks to promote examples of councils which have
protected bus services, sometimes in innovative ways. Please do feel free
to share any information you feel is relevant on how your council has
protected bus services.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Chris Todd

Campaign for Better Transport

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Bedford Borough Council is continuously working towards the requirements
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Subjects may exercise their information rights by contacting
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“Confidentiality: The information contained in this e-mail and any
attachment may be confidential and may contain legally privileged
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you are not the named recipient, please notify us immediately and delete
it from your system. In such an event, you should not disclose the
contents of this e-mail to any other person, or print it.”

References

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2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://www.ico.gov.uk/
4. mailto:[FOI #472336 email]