Centro preserves services despite budget cutbacks
TRANSPORT chiefs have voted to keep half-price bus fares for children and free tram and train travel for eligible people despite implementing a £7m budget cut.
Councillors serving on Centro, the region’s transport authority, also decided to safeguard free bus travel after 11pm for older people, the blind and disabled.
The approved budget for 2014/15 will see the region’s Ring and Ride charity receive an annual grant of £8.5m so that it can provide a door-to-door transport service between 8am and 8pm Monday to Saturday.
A new £1 per trip fare will be introduced and Centro will work closely with the charity over the coming weeks to mitigate any effect on Ring and Ride users. One area to be explored will be the provision of a limited Sunday service.
Centro members had considered cutting or even ending half price child fares, free tram and train travel and the Ring and Ride service in a bid to save 5% of the transport budget in 2014/15 and a further 5% in 2015/16.
A public consultation was held in which people were invited to give their views on the options and how they would affect the way they travel. More than 8,000 people responded.
Centro chairman, Cllr John McNicholas, said after the budget decision: “What the public consultation clearly showed was that the services provided by Centro are highly valued by many people.
“The responses we received have played a key role in helping Centro members decide how and where to make the necessary savings.
“As always, the passenger is our top priority and I believe we have succeeded in protecting them as far as possible in setting this very challenging budget.”
Cllr McNicholas said it had only been right for Centro to reduce the budget given the dramatic cuts in Government funding being faced by the district councils – Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.
He said the approved 5% cut meant Centro would now be able to reduce its levy on the councils by £7.3m for the coming year with the overall budget falling from £146m to £138.7m.
As well as a £2m reduction in the Ring and Ride grant, the approved budget will also involve a £1m reduction in bus station and infrastructure maintenance, changes to subsidised bus access standards and measures to reduce financing costs.
In order to limit the impact on frontline services Centro will be required to cut its own operational and staffing costs by £3m (15%) which is £1m more than originally planned for 2014/15.
It means that through on-going staffing restructures and other efficiencies, Centro will have reduced such costs from £27m in 2010 to £16.5m in 2014/15 – a cut of nearly 40%.
