Suffolk County Council have informed local Community Transport Operators that the
2014-15 Budgets & Service Level Agreements have now been finalised.
"A
review of mileage between 2010-11 and 2013-14 has highlighted that hospital
appointments are not within the service specification of supported Community Car
Services. The majority of these journeys are high mileage, moving services away
from local service provision. Therefore from 1st April 2014 the mileage subsidy will no longer be
supported. Subject to operator’s volunteer availability, passengers may continue
to access car services for hospital appointment journeys at 45p per mile. The
council will continue to support the operator’s admin support for each passenger
journey covered. In line with these changes, the 2014-15
car service budgets have been adjusted in relation to the current year end
hospital appointment mileage forecast..."
What this means is that for hospital journeys, the county council will no longer pay the 10 pence per mile subsidy, thus that will have to be collected from the passenger or borne by the non-profit operator of community car schemes. County have confirmed that "car service operators will not be subject to a reduction in budget as such, as it is the passenger who will be supporting the drivers mileage rate." SCC have not announced what this will save them per year.
Many CCS work using volunteers drivers in their own cars and they reimburse the volunteer at 45 pence per mile. The passenger is charged 35 pence per mile and the 10 pence of council subsidy makes up the difference. The schemes also get 40 pence per journey taken to cover the administration of claiming back mileage.
So now CCS might have to offer passengers two different charging scales: 35 pence for local journeys which are subsidized and 45 pence for hospital journeys which aren't.
Figures from the AA and RAC show that the real cost of car ownership per mile can be over 50 pence per mile. Many volunteers don't mind shouldering this cost, in the same way they don't mind travelling to volunteer somewhere, but on taking long journeys to hospitals, that can be significant.
So now CCS might have to offer passengers two different charging scales: 35 pence for local journeys which are subsidized and 45 pence for hospital journeys which aren't.
Figures from the AA and RAC show that the real cost of car ownership per mile can be over 50 pence per mile. Many volunteers don't mind shouldering this cost, in the same way they don't mind travelling to volunteer somewhere, but on taking long journeys to hospitals, that can be significant.
This action will certainly reduce the number of options that patients have to get to hospital appointments and increase the difficulties many have of attending them, especially when changes to commissioning of services have moved them to ever more distant hospitals, such as the proposal to close the liver resection department in Norwich and move it to Addenbrookes. In that case it may be a small number of cancer patients but it could be a death sentence to some of them.
According to the Department for Transport; 21.1 % of people in rural Suffolk live more than 60 minutes by public transport from hospital compared to 9.9% of rural England overall. Source: OCSI 2011 Department for Transport (DfT) 2009.
There are 35 LSOAs (each averages a population of 5000 people) in Suffolk more than two hours travel time from a hospital by public transport.
Between 2009 - 2012 there were 184,947 missed NHS appointments in Suffolk, costing£17.6 million. There is no hard data on the reasons why people miss appointments but local anecdotal evidence shows that poor transport, particularly in rural areas, is one reason. The West Suffolk Hospital says the cost of each 'DNA' to them varies according to whether it is a first or follow up appointment and for which speciality but the estimated loss is about £110 per appointment.
I feel the voluntary and community sector is not being served by the arbitrary fixed rate the HMRC sets for mileage reimbursement they will accept without question of employees making profit, which is also applied to volunteers using their cars in community car schemes.
Since 45p per mile (for the first 10,000 miles) is now below the RAC /AA rate of car operation, as fuel and insurance costs rise, volunteers using their own cars in CCS will continue to subsidise these schemes, leading to increasing difficulty in recruiting volunteer drivers into schemes or forcing schemes to be capitalised in a way they provide their own vehicles. This is a huge barrier to establishing schemes and has many attendant costs beyond the vehicle. For a start it is quite a complicated five-step calculation for volunteers to work out if they might be making a profit or not.
I have brought this up with Dan Poulter MP but I did not get a satisfactory response as he didn’t see the difference between employee use and volunteer use and the legislation is framed around the taxable benefit of using a car for work. The Chartered Institute of Taxation had suggested in 2011 that 50 pence was fairer when the rate of 40p then "was below the cost of running a car". After a comprehensive consultation in 2008, the Community Transport Association concluded that low tax-free mileage allowances combined with rising fuel prices was deterring potential voluntary drivers. It asked the Government to increase the tax-free rate to 45p per mile which was realised in the 2011 budget.
Raising the allowable rate again to 50p or 55p per mile for volunteers using their own cars will have no impact on the costs of SCC and community transport schemes yet the schemes might be able to operate and charge lower rates or offer sliding scale on longer journeys but fixing it at 45p per mile does not allow any flexibility because it is for many volunteers and schemes less that their true cost, especially for short journeys.
I feel the voluntary and community sector is not being served by the arbitrary fixed rate the HMRC sets for mileage reimbursement they will accept without question of employees making profit, which is also applied to volunteers using their cars in community car schemes.
Since 45p per mile (for the first 10,000 miles) is now below the RAC /AA rate of car operation, as fuel and insurance costs rise, volunteers using their own cars in CCS will continue to subsidise these schemes, leading to increasing difficulty in recruiting volunteer drivers into schemes or forcing schemes to be capitalised in a way they provide their own vehicles. This is a huge barrier to establishing schemes and has many attendant costs beyond the vehicle. For a start it is quite a complicated five-step calculation for volunteers to work out if they might be making a profit or not.
I have brought this up with Dan Poulter MP but I did not get a satisfactory response as he didn’t see the difference between employee use and volunteer use and the legislation is framed around the taxable benefit of using a car for work. The Chartered Institute of Taxation had suggested in 2011 that 50 pence was fairer when the rate of 40p then "was below the cost of running a car". After a comprehensive consultation in 2008, the Community Transport Association concluded that low tax-free mileage allowances combined with rising fuel prices was deterring potential voluntary drivers. It asked the Government to increase the tax-free rate to 45p per mile which was realised in the 2011 budget.
Raising the allowable rate again to 50p or 55p per mile for volunteers using their own cars will have no impact on the costs of SCC and community transport schemes yet the schemes might be able to operate and charge lower rates or offer sliding scale on longer journeys but fixing it at 45p per mile does not allow any flexibility because it is for many volunteers and schemes less that their true cost, especially for short journeys.
