Making the cut: UK spending review special - Steer Davies Gleave

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special uk spending review 3 reasons why car clubs are taking off While most of its members are individuals, car clubs offer local authorities great benefits too. By Matthew Clark It’s good for the environment Evidence from the Carplus annual survey 2009/2010 shows that, on average, for every car club car, 11 private vehicles have been sold. Car club members tend to make a greater proportion of trips by more sustainable modes than average. The reduction in car mileage by car club members also has a positive effect on emission levels, with car trips by club members producing only a quarter of the emissions of a typical British licence holder. It makes political sense Encouraging sustainable travel is an area of policy which the UK’s new coalition government is keen to promote. When considering policy options for increasing sustainable travel, local authorities will increasingly need to focus on value for money. One way to tackle both the need to conserve financial resources and promote increased travel by public transport, walking and cycling, is to explore partnerships with commercial car club operators. Which brings us onto… 12 It’s a win-win situation Car clubs provide a perfect opportunity for a partnership between the public sector and the private sector. Local authorities looking to develop a car club network can also lead by example, benefiting from using car club cars for their own travel, replacing the hassle and cost of maintaining fleet cars with car club cars on site. Sophisticated management of car club bookings makes it straightforward for different departments to be billed separately, while the all-inclusive cost of bookings makes costs transparent and encourages consideration of the use of other modes, such as train and bus travel where possible. Car clubs can potentially provide a ‘win-win’ situation for local authorities. A successfully implemented and promoted car club network can provide a local authority with both an incentive for residents to reconsider their car use patterns and a way to increase the efficiencies and green credentials of its car fleet. So will it work for your area? As with all types of transport, the success of a car club within a particular location will vary. Car clubs are most successful commercially where population density is high, public transport is good and local authorities are supportive. Steer Davies Gleave recently completed a car club market study for the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington, which considered the maximum potential for car clubs, bringing together information about car club members, population demographics, and travel patterns. This study provided an evidence base to help with a planned, managed and informed expansion of car club provision across the two boroughs. To find out more contact Matthew Clark t +44 (0)20 7910 5000 e matthew.clark@sdgworld.net
Making the cut Which schemes should be cut and which ones shouldn’t? Steer Davies Gleave offers local authorities four guiding principles on how to prioritise their transport plans. By Tom Higbee Funding cuts will have significant implications for local authorities. Some very difficult choices will need to be made. At the same time, many transport problems and issues remain pressing, and authorities, through their third Local Transport Plan (LTP3) are looking to establish clear policy priorities for the coming years. While the funding picture will become a little clearer when the outcome of the Spending Review is published in October, it could well be the new year before the Department for Transport can be definitive about what money will be available. Waiting until the new year will mean it will be too late to get a well thought through plan in place. Authorities should now be considering their response to prospective cuts of 20% to 40%. Efficiency savings will be important, but we know that this level of spend reduction can’t be met by efficiency alone. The question is how to identify those activities and programmes that should be prioritised and those which should be cut. One option is to scroll through budget lines and pluck those that neatly correspond to the level of cuts required – already some authorities have culled their smarter choices programme broadly on this basis. Another approach is to ‘salami slice’, with a proportionate cut cascaded down the chain so that each budget holder must reduce costs by an equivalent amount. This is arguably fair (all suffer equally), certainly expedient (it avoids making difficult decisions), but ignores the fact that addressing transport priorities and issues will almost certainly require a re-focusing of activities. At Steer Davies Gleave we advocate an approach to prioritisation that is evidenceled, transparent, and is capable of examining and assessing the contribution of a range of activities against key policy goals and value for money. We have developed prioritisation frameworks for key clients including Metro, Transport for London, Merseytravel and Yorkshire Forward to help them understand the performance of interventions and the key trade-offs between them. While there are lessons to be learned from this experience, the development of any prioritisation framework should be bespoke and tailored for purpose for which it is being used – i.e. what are the key questions that need to be answered? There are, however, fundamental features of each of the prioritisation frameworks we have developed, based around a set of guiding principles: t objective-led. The framework must develop criteria and measures that directly relate to key policy priorities, whether thematic (e.g. economic efficiency, carbon) or spatial (regeneration or improving connectivity). t evidence-based. The assessment of performance against policy priorities and value for money should be underpinned by the best available evidence. However, a single model or analytic tool cannot support assessments of potential across disparate interventions and activities, so there must be an explicit role for professional judgment and the need to draw on, and interpret, evidence from elsewhere. special uk spending review t transparency. The assessments of individual interventions must be supported by a clear rationale that is presented to decision makers. These should be subject to review and challenge. t informing decision making. The purpose of the framework is to provide decision makers with the best available evidence base to enable them to prioritise activities. It should not provide ‘the answer’ but provide an understanding of key trade-offs between alternative expenditure scenarios. The development of a robust and transparent approach to prioritisation will not mean living with cuts will be easy, but it will ensure that decisions are informed and that local priorities and challenges are best met within the funding available. To find out more contact Tom Higbee t +44 (0)20 7910 5000 e tom.higbee@sdgworld.net 13
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