No LSTF millions for Worthing or Crawley

In June 2012, West Sussex County Council was awarded £2.46 million (that's £2,460,000) for three years to provide Local Sustainable Transport in the county. That's a very useful amount of "free" additional money[1] in a county that doesn't really prioritise sustainable transport much at all.

But although the bid included schemes in Chichester, Horsham, Worthing and Crawley, only the first two towns are seeing any of this money.

Why is that? Well, when DfT were deciding on the amounts to award each authority, they communicated with Officers. The response to a Freedom of Information Act request details the decision-making process in action.

First the DfT asked WSCC for their top priorities in their bid:

18 May 2012

Hi Darryl,

As discussed on the phone just now, Ministers are currently discussing Tranche 2 bids with a view to making an announcement shortly, and we’ve been asked to follow up a few issues with various bidders. In the case of your bid, Ministers would like to know what your prioritisation would be for the four towns you highlighted in your bid, in order from most to least significant.

If it is possible, it would also be helpful to have some approximate figures for what your request for funding would be from the DfT for these four towns separately.

I appreciate this is very short notice, but if you’re able to respond with some responses by the end of today (or 10am Monday at the latest if this afternoon is too soon), I’d appreciate it. We are meeting with Norman Baker MP again on Monday morning, and it would be very helpful to have a response to take to him if he wants to follow up.

I should stress also that Ministerial decision-making has not yet concluded, and that this request for further information should not be viewed as any indication as to the status of your bid.

Many thanks in advance,
Tricia 

Darryl responded:

21 May 2012

Hi Tricia,

In the time available it has not been possible to discuss this with our members who, if we are successful, may very well choose to take a different approach. That said, in the time available we have identified the following priority list:

1. Chichester
2. Horsham
2. Crawley
4. Worthing

I will aim to provide more detail on costs later today but initially we estimate the a package for the 3 highest priority towns would cost (to DfT) £1.9m capital and £1.75m revenue. I hope that information is helpful. If you would like to discuss this further then please email as I am out of the office today.

Kind regards,
Darryl

And a little later:

21 May 2012

Hi Tricia,

Further to my earlier email we have disaggregated the bid costs into the 4 towns and those activities which are intended to operate across all the towns. For those activities which are
common to each of the towns, it is difficult to estimate in the time available, the cost saving which could be achieved by dropping 1 or more of the towns from the programme. For the
time being these are therefore highlighted. Hopefully this provides you with the information you need but please let us know if anything else is required.

	Capital	Revenue	Total
Chichester	£590,639	£262,075	£852,714
Crawley	£710,411	£400,675	£1,111,086
Horsham	£607,560	£432,575	£1,040,135
Worthing	£798,903	£432,575	£1,231,478
All LSTF towns		£763,400	£763,400
Total	£2,707,513	£2,291,300	£4,998,813

Kind regards.
Darryl  

Tricia replied, asking for more prioritisation:

22 May 2012

Thanks for this, Darryl, this is very helpful.

In your email of Monday morning, it looks like you’re giving Crawley and Horsham an equal ranking as both second in priority. In our discussions with Norman Baker MP, he was asking for a second and third ranking for these two towns, from your perspective. Would you be able to provide us with that ranking, please?

Many thanks for your swift turnaround on these queries,
Tricia

And Ian Steane replied:

22 May 2012 

Hi Tricia,

Darryl's out of the office at the moment but has asked me to reply to you.  In response to the Minister's question we would prioritise Horsham above Crawley.  As mentioned previously we have not discussed this with Members yet, who may take a different view on the order.  If there is a successful announcement we would prefer the towns not to be named individually so we can have these discussions with Members to gauge their opinions. 

Kind regards
Iain 

Note that he specifically says:

we have not discussed this with Members yet, who may take a different view on the order

and:

we would prefer the towns not to be named individually so we can have these discussions with Members to gauge their opinions

meaning that the decision to award the money to only Chichester and Horsham was taken by WSCC officers without any consultation with elected representatives on the council. The officers were planning to discuss the final allocation of funding with elected members after any award had been made.

Finally, the LSTF money was awarded, as follows:

11 July 2012 

Dear Mr Hemmings,

West Sussex Sustainable Travel Towns

Thank you for your tranche 2 bid to the Local Sustainable Transport Fund, submitted in February. This letter is to inform you that Ministers have decided to provide partial funding for this bid.

This bid contained a comprehensive programme of measures focussing on journey to work and schools and has a clear commitment from bus operators. Funding has been approved for the two top priority locations, Chichester (£853k) and Horsham (£1,111k), and half the additional programme-wide costs have also been approved (£381.75k) to support these priorities. The Department would be happy to provide further feedback and advice if you require. Please contact the team at [email address].

The Department’s funding contribution to the project takes effect from 27 June, and will
be paid as resource and capital grant as follows:

£k	Revenue	Capital	Total
2012/13	92	124	216
2013/14	532	71	603
2014/15	453	1074	1527
Total	1077	1269	2346

We will write to you shortly with a formal offer of grant under Section 31 of the Local Government Act 2003. The letter will include the terms under which the grant is to be provided. It will also explain that there will be no opportunity to carry forward any unspent funds into subsequent financial years.

Thank you for taking the time to develop your bid to the Fund. My team and I look forward to working with you and we wish you every success in implementing the project and realising the benefits for your local communities.

Yours sincerely,
Pauline Reeves  

Oh dear, they mentioned the towns explicitly! That's embarrassing, as democratically-elected members can't now have a say. WSCC just blamed DfT for specifying the towns, when, as we can see, it was WSCC officers that made this unaccountable decision.

Can you also spot the error: they've awarded the amount allocated for Crawley to Horsham! Horsham should be pleased to get that extra £71,000 they weren't expecting!

So that's why Worthing and Crawley missed out potentially hundreds of thousands of LSTF money for sustainable transport.

[1] However even two million over three years isn't that much if you compare it to the fifty million annual county Highways budget (£52,400,000 allocated for 2013/2014). In fact it's an increase of only 1.6% in spending.