Archived decisions

Item 8

Report to the

Transport for South Hampshire Joint Committee

Date: 14 April 2008

Report by: Keith Willcox

tel: 01962 846997 email: [email protected]

Subject: Transport for South Hampshire Budget 2008/09

Purpose of the Report

To set out the required revenue budget for 2008/09 in order to enable delivery of the Transport for South Hampshire strategy.

Recommendations

1. That the Joint Committee approves the provisional Transport for South Hampshire Revenue Budget for 2008/09 on the basis of information provided, notably the anticipated level of contributions and awards from a variety of funding sources.

2. That the submission of Expressions of Interest for funding support for Bus Rapid Transit and Tipner Link under the Government's Community Infrastructure Fund be endorsed.

Introduction

1. Transport for South Hampshire needs to rely upon the provision of funds from its constituent partners, as well as grants from public sector stakeholders on an ad-hoc basis, together with awards from new funding streams that are announced from time to time by Government and other agencies.

2. This process does not best equip the partnership in setting a budget to make longer term plans for the design and delivery of schemes. There is much work to be done in undertaking outline design studies and developing business cases and scheme assessments for the raft of interventions that will be needed in South Hampshire over the coming years. A separate report on this agenda details the schemes that will require attention, within the statement `Towards Delivery'. The design and implementation of schemes to tackle the transport challenges in the sub-region both now and in the face of planned growth will require significant commitment by the TfSH authorities and their partners both in terms of manpower and finance.

The Transport for South Hampshire Provisional Budget

3. A provisional budget of £1.36 million is proposed for approval, based upon anticipated commitments at this stage - see appendix to this report. Funding from other sources will be pursued over the coming months to provide additional revenue streams to enable further work to be undertaken to a total cost in the region of £2 million. A major item within this budget is the development of an Evidence Base to appraise and test alternative options as part of the planning requirement for transport schemes and interventions. A separate report on the development of the Evidence Base is to be found elsewhere on this agenda. It is estimated that this work may need up to £1 million during this financial year, but the budget envisages the commitment of £485,000, with further contributions to be assembled during the year.

4. The second large item on the budget is the need for technical (engineering design, traffic, environmental and operational) studies to develop the business case for the construction and delivery of Bus Rapid Transit for South East Hampshire. This scheme has good prospects and planning for it, backed by adequate resources, needs to commence promptly. A budget allocation of £500,000 is proposed for this item.

5. Contributions have already been earmarked from the Communities and Local Government Department under its New Growth Point Funding stream. A sum of £310,000 has been allocated for specific transport studies as part of the overall revenue grant to PUSH and the provisional budget proposes a reallocation of certain of these headings, subject to DCLG approval, in order to maximise the complementary funding from other sources.

6. Over the last year contributions towards the cost of transport studies were received from Department for Transport, SEERA and Highways Agency, as well as DCLG. A contribution in kind was made by Network Rail in the form of a strategic rail study for South Hampshire, which is informing all parties. It is planned to approach these agencies once again for contributions towards the further studies planned for 2008/09.

7. In addition, the local authorities contributed cash, as well as staff time to the work of the partnership. Contributions from each of these authorities is, once again, sought as detailed on the proposed budget.
At the meeting of the Joint Committee on 16 October 2007 the Action Plan accompanying the TfSH Business Plan to 2009 approved the development of a Funding Strategy. This will be necessary to explore possible new funding sources, involving specialist expertise. It is timely to action this in order to benefit from the new tariff based approach of the Community Infrastructure Levy and opportunities to secure financial commitments from financial institutions while scheme development is under way. If new funding opportunities are not sought, when Government funding is under pressure, it will prove difficult to achieve the objectives of TfSH.

Community Infrastructure Fund

8. The Government has established a Community Infrastructure Fund to assist growth areas in unlocking housing development by the release of funding for capital investment in infrastructure. Discussions with Government officials suggest that a bid for financial support towards the delivery of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) would be well received from South Hampshire. This CIF covers a three year window, during which time there is an expectation that the investment sought will be delivered on the ground. Whilst it would be unrealistic to expect a fully operational BRT system to be delivered within this timescale, there are a number of advance and enabling works that could be implemented within the timeframe to take advantage of this money.

9. Expressions of Interest have been requested by 21 April and an announcement will be made in July of successful applicants. This will be followed by a requirement for those applicants to submit a full business case by October. This abbreviated timescale illustrates the need to make preparations for studies and investigations on this project, but also underlines the importance of reaching a state of readiness so as to take advantage of opportunist funding streams for other projects. This need was foreseen by the Joint Committee at its last meeting on 8 January 2008 in giving authority to submit appropriate funding bids for sub-regional priority schemes when funding resources become available.

10. The Joint Committee is invited to endorse the submission of an Expression of Interest for CIF funding to support the BRT by 21 April deadline. A copy of the document will be made available to members of the Joint Committee upon submission to the Department for Transport. A CIF application is also likely to be made to seek forward funding of the Tipner Link in Portsmouth.

1618Rpt/PM