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a)    
To submit the Funding Proposal (Appendix A) and
Project Adjustment Request (Appendix B) to the Department for
Transport. 

b)    
Note the requirement to seek Executive approval
before spending any of the £2.045m BSIP Ph3 funding and for
any capital funding to be added to the capital
programme. 
 
The Department for Transport
notified the Council in December 2023 that it had been allocated
£2.045m of BSIP Ph3 funding and requested that the Council
submit, by 29 February 2024, its plans for spending that funding
and the £1,138,824 of BSIP Ph2 (or BSIP+) funding previously
awarded (£569,412 for both 2023/24 and 2024/25).
 
As allocated, the funding is
revenue funding and to be expended within 12 months of
receipt.  However, the Council may
submit a Project Adjustment Request to seek authority to expend
some of the revenue funding on service support more than 12 months
after receipt or exceptionally to spend some of the funding as
capital.
 
Executive approved receipt of
the BSIP+ funding on 14th September 2023 (item 497). The report
proposed the following initial criteria for spending the
funding:
•         To
continue to fund existing bus services where they represent value
for money or maintain essential connectivity for local
communities;
•         To
increase service frequency or restore services withdrawn since the
start of the Covid-19 pandemic where there is a reasonable prospect
of the service becoming commercially viable within the period of
BSIP+ funding; and
•         To
forward fund improvements where Section 106 developer funding is
due before the end of the BSIP+ funding period to increase the time
for the service to achieve commercial viability.
 
The Executive delegated
authority to the Executive Member for Highways, Travel & Assets
in consultation with the Executive Director of Place & Economy
to take any actions needed to award the local bus service contracts
and any further decisions/actions relating to expenditure of the
BSIP+ funding.
 
Proposals for spending the
BSIP+ and BSIP Ph3 funding through service subsidy agreements have
been drawn up in line with the criteria set out in the September
2023 report.  A number of new/enhanced
services have been identified which it is planned to fund, as set
out in Appendix C.  These will ensure
that some existing services will continue which might otherwise be
withdrawn, increase frequencies on some services and also provide a
regular bus service to a number of communities that have not had a
service for some years.
 
Other non-service subsidy
agreement expenditure has been drawn from the Council’s Bus
Service Improvement Plan, adopted by Executive in November
2021.  In light of the scale of
proposals to be funded, additional proposals for LTA capacity
support and marketing of the new/enhanced services have also been
added.
 
The resultant revenue funding
proposals are set out on the Department for Transport’s
Funding Proposal proforma (Appendix A).
 
The proposals will expend a
total of £2,311,627 by the end of the 2024/25 financial
year.  In order to reduce the risk that
there will be no future funding to continue these services, the
Project Adjustment Request (Appendix B) has been prepared to seek
the Department for Transport’s permission to carry the
remaining £872,197 forward for service subsidy support in
2025/26.  This will not only ensure
continued funding for services in 2025/26, but also allow other
funding for the services such as Section 106 developer
contributions to be used over a longer period.
 
The Project Adjustment Request
also seeks permission to spend £128,000 of the funding as
capital in 2024/25.