Handy Bus Club Update

I was asked in a letter if there was going to be a bus service for Laxfield, Heveningham, Huntingfield and Walpole anytime soon.


The present situation is that Laxfield and Peasenhall Parish Councils and Suffolk County Council have been offered by me - the instigator - a ‘Handy Bus’ service, which I trialled for three months to replace the service they had which has been cut, leaving many people without any public transport. In this model, a local Community Transport Operator provides vehicles and drivers and local volunteers are bus conductors; what we have called a 'Bus Buddy'. Due to the legal complexity of operating a scheduled community minibus, the Handy Bus must be a separate entity from the CTO and is a social club that charters their bus from them.


Cllr Guy McGregor - the SCC porfolio holder for transport - has said to Laxfield that he would "look into" the scheduled service which they have demanded to be replaced and it is intimated that it would be provided though a Demand Responsive Transport operator, such as the local Pathfinder, which is supported entirely by Suffolk County Council. 


Such a service enabled this way would therefore not have the user-determined features nor bring the social care benefits that the Handy Bus model has demonstrated. I honestly don’t know how SCC can get around the regulations either. DRT works according to one set of VOSA rules and the ‘staged’ services, the regular sort of buses, have another. You can’t, as far as I understand it, have one do the other except with the Handy Bus model - which can be applied to several modes of transport.


Disregarding these technicalities: the choice for Laxfield and other communities needing access to Halesworth is to either lobby their county councillors to provide a service through the Pathfinder or have SCC contract someone else or form a Handy Bus Club and operate a service themselves.


The first two options would enable use of a OAP concession pass and thus be free to the expected majority of passengers. For the latter to be sustainable for a Laxfield, Peasenhall and Halesworth service, it would require a subscription of ten passengers paying around £5 per week, which is much cheaper than a shared taxi or per-mile charge of a volunteer community car scheme. A Handy Bus is also a more efficient use of a volunteer driver's time.


However, if a funder was prepared to give ongoing support for a Handy Bus, then passenger charges would be whatever the difference was between costs and their subsidy. The social care benefits that the Handy Bus model brings can obtain other kinds of funding not available to transport operators and thus there is a good case for support of a Handy Bus from the parish precept.


There is the third possibility that SCC might offer a contract to Halesworth Area Community Transport instead of the local DRT operator to provide a scheduled service to Laxfield etc. This is something that HACT would consider very carefully and I understand it is equipped to do. However, SCC has been reticent to support scheduled services - which HACT provide - since it removed subsidy to commercial operators because SCC policy in the 'New Strategic Direction' is committed to DRT operations. 


At the heart of it is the County Council's belief that the DRT model will deliver cost savings over subsidy of scheduled operators. HACT, the Handy Bus' preferred vendor, was not operationally equipped for DRT while the local Pathfinder and other operators were supplied by SCC with new vehicles to operate DRT to replace the scheduled services removed from the timetables. It's the DRT and not the 'staged' community transport operators that have received SCC funding to replace the services that commercial operators withdrew once their SCC subsidy was cut. However the new technology supposed to enable more efficient DRT booking  has not yet materialised, that provision too apparently has since been cut.


It was to cut through this muddle that I proposed and trialled the alternative ‘Handy Bus’ model, a hyper-local, scheduled service with the ability to vary the route, running to a timetable that users determine, so a bit like a DRT and a bit like the ordinary bus offering passengers the confidence they can start and complete their journeys. This difficulty in ensuring passenger confidence is just one drawback of DRT.


A nascent Handy Bus Club - if it serves Peasenhall too - could have some start-up funding from the Time For You Project to cover insurance etc. The Handy Bus trials lined up drivers and vehicles from HACT but it now needs to recruit five trustees and about eight volunteers to operate it, if those volunteers were to give 4 hours on one day per month. 


Several people are ready and willing but to date we only have two keen volunteers of the eight needed to make a start and potentially three out of five trustees. I consider it is the dangling promise of SCC to provide some kind of scheduled services that has squelched passengers and communities interest or initiative in achieving a service on the Handy Bus model. Why go to the trouble of running your own bus service on your own terms - free from the threats of a subsidy withdrawal by local government - when the council still could provide something?


So I wonder when will SCC declare what they are going to do for Laxfield and the communities between Halesworth so we can get on with providing it or get on with our lives if the Handy Bus is not going to be part of it?