(25 Jan 2022, 10:54 pm)OrangeArrow49 wrote https://www.facebook.com/100009920923911...978772612/

Good but interesting update. The funding situation is a mess at the moment, so big changes are going to sadly be inevitable unless the Government stick their hand in their pocket.

The £7.5m reduction in ENCTS budget by Nexus; this was discussed at the JTC in November, and as I understood, it's due to the calculation moving from estimates at pre-Covid levels rather than actuals. That was retained by Nexus throughout 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years, in-line with Government policy. Nexus estimated in November that ENCTS use was around 60% of pre-pandemic levels (across the county - not just GNE). They claimed at the JTC that this resulted in an estimated £40 million over-payment to operators during the two financial years.

The knock on impact if that hadn't happened would have likely been a complete decimation of services I'd imagine, but its good to consider these things with the context.

Even with reducing this though, Nexus are still very much in the shit financially and it won't be long before they move to the last resort of increasing the levy in Tyne and Wear and asking for more cash from Durham and Northumberland. Very much like Nexus, cash none of the Councils have, after 12 years of austerity. They're using around £5.5m of reserves to balance the budget this year, which never a good place to be in.

There'll be the usual finger-wagging that Nexus are cutting bus support to bail out the Metro, but we shouldn't forget that the support for Light Rail is facing the same April cliff-edge as the Bus Recovery Grant.

There's an enormous funding gap right across public transport at the minute. There's an estimated £5bn funding gap in what's required to deliver the National Bus Strategy. After the Govt told everyone to go away and draw up ambitious Bus Service Improvement Plans and form Enhanced Partnerships, they've gradually cut the £3bn on offer to £2bn, then again to £1.4bn.

I've said before and I'll say again, but I really think the idea of a BSIP or Enhanced Partnership up here is all but abandoned, and really to no fault of the operators or local authorities. That's evident in the changes suggested in Martijn's video and what we've already seen elsewhere in the GNE network, before we even get on to other operators making cuts.

Unless the Govt make the funding available, we'll be lucky to get a fleet of model buses out of a BSIP, never mind a Superbus network.