BUS USERS UK Annual Report 2007

1. Chairman’s Report
This has been a year when external events have caused us some concern about the long-term future of BUS USERS UK as it is presently constituted. The first uncertainty arose from the plans for a Welsh Transport Users Committee, which seemed to suggest that some of the work we have been carrying out successfully in Wales might be subsumed into the new WTUC, which could threaten the generous funding that we have received in recent years from the Welsh Assembly Government to support our work there. We firmly believe that there is still a significant continuing role for BUS USERS UK in Wales and expect to play a prominent role in the new organisation.

In England, the government has indicated that, as part of the new Transport Act currently under consideration, there should be a Bus Passengers’ Champion, which would give English bus users outside London statutory representation for the first time. The National Federation of Bus Users, which later became BUS USERS UK, was set up by Dr Caroline Cahm more than 20 years ago in the absence of such a statutory body, and we are happy that the interests of bus users are being recognised at government level. Train passengers already have such a body in Passenger Focus and there is a suggestion that this body could become involved in representing bus passengers. We admire the work that Passenger Focus does, but recognise that it functions at a national level in a regulated industry that is very different from the bus industry. We believe that the strengths of BUS USERS UK lie very much at the local level, as the bus industry is very much a local business, and Passenger Focus recognises this situation.

We await the outcome of the government’s consultation and believe that there is a continuing role for BUS USERS UK in — or as — the new Bus Passengers’ Champion.

Some time ago, even before the question of statutory representation was raised, we started a business review of BUS USERS UK to consider how we could give passengers an even better say in the provision of their bus services. We recognise that we require to have much greater representation throughout the UK, and envisage a network of full-time officers who would give us an effective presence on the ground and who would work with local passengers, users’ groups, local authorities and bus operators to look after the interests of local passengers.

This of course implies greater funding than we currently receive — we estimate an annual turnover of around £1million — and while we are grateful to our members for their support, and for the generous support of the bus operators, we would have preferred to have been able to fund the organisation without depending on the industry; some have sought to question our objectivity as a result of it. Nonetheless, until the recent decision to move towards a statutory body, Government policy towards has been: ‘it is entirely appropriate the industry should fund its own watchdog’.

We firmly believe that BUS USERS UK is ready to ‘up its game’ and move towards a better and more comprehensive, truly localised coverage that will get much closer to the passenger at the bus stop. How and if this happens will hinge on the outcome of the government’s deliberations, but as we wait to find out how we might be involved in statutory representation, we shall continue to work hard to look after the interests of the passengers who make an astonishing three billion bus journeys each year in the UK, and that excludes another billion or so in London.

Finally, I want to thank the small but dedicated band of officers who work very hard on your behalf.

Gavin Booth
Chairman

BUS USERS UK President Caroline Cahm and
Chairman Gavin Booth

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2. BUS USERS UK work in Scotland
BUS USERS UK chairman, Gavin Booth, is a member of the recently-formed Bus Passengers’ Platform, the statutory body that was set up by the Scottish Government to consider complaints that have not been dealt with satisfactorily. He also sits on the Bus Action Plan Task Group, which is charged with developing the National Transport Strategy. In particular he has compiled a new set of guidelines for the provision of bus service information throughout Scotland.

He also sits on Transport Scotland’s Strategic Transport Projects Review Reference Group, and continues to carry out Quality Audits on bus services and passenger facilities throughout Scotland. He has also met with bus operators, local authorities, transport consultants and other interest groups, and has addressed public meetings on behalf of bus passengers

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BUS USERS UK work in Wales
In Wales we are privileged to receive funding for our activities from the Welsh assembly. We have a service level agreement with the assembly, with The Key Outcomes required by the assembly listed below

• To gather and reflect the views of bus passengers in Wales
• To provide a contact point for all bus user complaints in Wales
• To develop and maintain a database of bus passenger complaints in Wales
• To organise and manage the delivery of bus passenger surgeries in Wales
• To provide an advice service to local authorities and bus operators in Wales to improve responses to passenger views and to improve service delivery
• To provide advice as required to the National Assembly for Wales and Ministers of the Welsh Assembly Government, both directly and through the Welsh Transport Forum, on strategic and technical developments related to bus transport
  

In addition to the organisations listed elsewhere, we work with:

PTI Cymru
We share office accommodation in Cardiff with PTI Cymru Ltd, provider of Traveline Cymru, giving us access to timetable changes and helping us gauge the impact of network changes.

Consumer representative bodies and Welsh Consumer Council
Working alongside the Welsh Consumer Council and other consumer bodies in Wales has helped us understand a wider range of consumer issues.

Age Concern Cymru
A large percentage of bus users are above pensionable age, so there are a number of areas where we share common interests.

Passenger Focus
We work alongside Passenger Focus’s passenger link manager for Wales; Passenger Focus is an independent public body set up by Government to promote rail users’ interests.

Community Transport Association
Community Transport provides opportunities for bus users whose local services are being curtailed to use services to link up with mainstream service.

Police
We have worked with the Welsh Police Forces and British Transport Police to develop the Bobbies on Buses scheme and work continues to develop a best practice incident reporting scheme.

Welsh Assembly Government
BUS USERS UK works closely with Welsh Assembly Government staff and is regularly asked to comment on matters of policy development.

Leo Markham
Undoubtedly our greatest sadness of 2007 was the sudden death of our Officer in Wales Leo Markham on Easter Monday, 9 April. Leo, who was 59, was taken ill with heart trouble on 4 April on the return journey from a Bus Users’ Surgery in Wrexham and died in hospital. He had headed BUS USERS UK in Wales for the previous six years and by developing close links with Welsh Assembly Government had built a particularly effective and very professional organisation in Wales. Leo had spent all his working life in road transport, and was described by Barclay Davies, his deputy in Wales, as ‘a great man, totally committed to improving public transport. He was my boss, but he was also my friend. He will be sorely missed.’ We now have a very able Senior Officer in Wales, Margaret Everson, who took up her post in December, and we are grateful to Barclay Davies who held the fort magnificently during those difficult months

Leo Markham, our officer in Wales, who died suddenly in April 2007

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4.Surgeries
One of BUS USERS UK’s main activities is its Surgeries programme. The normal procedure is that one of the operators provides a bus to use as a static base for the surgery, ideally in a town centre, which is then manned by BUS USERS UK representatives, bus company management and local authority officers, to allow bus users to put their questions and comments to the providers of their services.

BUS USERS UK does not charge for its services, beyond recompense of the direct costs involved in attendance.

Bus users throughout the country have found surgeries an invaluable opportunity to have their say about matters that concern them, while operators find them an important source of feedback and a unique environment in which to meet their customers face-to-face.

During 2007, our surgeries programme was curtailed to some extent. Joe Lynch, who left us in 2006, had organised many of our surgeries, as had Caroline Cahm, who has, deservedly, eased off a little this year. We are working on increasing our surgery programme in 2008.

Nonetheless, during 2007 BUS USERS UK carried out surgeries in:

• Aberystwyth
• Birmingham (City Centre)
• Birmingham (University)
• Bridgend
• Cambridge
• Cardiff
• Colchester
• Connahs Quay
• Coventry
• Llandudno
• Menai Bridge
• Newtown
• Plymouth
• Pontypridd
• Rhyl
• Ruthin
• Staines
• Swindon
• Tenby
• Wolverhampton
• Welshpool
• Wrexham

Above left: Surgery on board a bus in Colchester
Above right: And in a day centre in Aberystwyth

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5.External affairs
Stephen Morris, who had been working with us since 2000 to produce BUS USER magazine on a consultancy basis, joined the staff, part time, as External Affairs Officer on 1 March 2007. He has continued to develop the magazine, but has also worked on a wide brief. He is BUS USERS UK’s representative on the Bus Appeals Body, Journey Solutions and the Concessionary Fares Stakeholder Panel.

Press campaigns included issues such as the Competition Commission’s unhelpful influence on bus services, the effects of EU drivers’ hours regulations on rural routes, which resulted in us appearing on BBC Radio 4, the Local Transport Bill and proposals for a statutory bus passenger champion. The last two issues have involved us in various consultation exercises and meetings with other organisations.

Part of the year was also taken up in developing the proposed new nationwide structure for the organisation, work on which began prior to the announcement of the intention to create a statutory body, and the approach has had to be modified to take into account this change in policy.

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6.Financial matters
We are a small team of dedicated people. Among the roles of our long-standing Treasurer, Stephen le Bras, is chasing up bus companies for their annual contributions. We would of course prefer a situation where our finances were considerably enhanced, but thankfully our President has managed the stewardship of available funds very well over the years. As a result, we have managed to help a lot of bus users resolve their problems.

A small plea from our treasurer, (who is, as his name suggests, one-quarter French), is that the increasing number of French controlled bus giants make their full contribution to our funds. They have taken the decision to invest in this country and we hope they play their part in all aspects of this country’s activities.

Our total income for England was 2007 was £115,633, and our activities in Wales and Scotland were funded largely from grants of just over £90,000 from Welsh Assembly Government and £30,000 from the Scottish Government. £6,623 came from individual membership subscriptions, £36,260 from corporate membership, £71,250 in direct grants from the bus industry and £1,500 was from other sources.

Our main expenditure in England was staffing, at nearly £70,000, with £8,834 on rental for the Stoke office, £10,000 on magazine production and other publications and £7,500 on other items such as travel, telephone and professional consultants’ fees. The remaining £19,000 is carried forward to fund our activities in the first part of 2008, as our funding streams are not all in line with the calendar year. We are very grateful to the big transport groups for additional funding this year, without which our loss would have been even larger than that in 2006, when we made a loss of nearly £1,300

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7.The move to Stoke
A major change for the organisation was the removal of its head office from Portsmouth to Stoke-on-Trent. Ever since the organisation began it had been based in Portsmouth, where founder Dr Caroline Cahm had her home. As our Life President Caroline has decided to take a slightly lower profile in the organisation, though is still very much involved. However she no longer has day-to-day responsibility for running BUS USERS UK and following the appointment of Sue Dawson as our new administrator, new accommodation was found closer to Sue’s home in Stoke.

Sue joined us in May 2007 and has taken over much of the administration work, including looking after membership. As a result our previous membership secretary and general factotum in the Portsmouth office, Joy Catherall, has retired, and we would like to express our thanks to Joy for her years of work, undertaken with unfailing cheerfulness, at Portsmouth.

Sue Dawson in the stoke office

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8.Handling complaints
BUS USERS UK deals with a good number of complaints on behalf of bus users every year. Many of these are resolved comparatively easily, though we have been pleased this year to welcome Chris Dale, who has been working with us one day a week in the Stoke office to help our Officer for England Phil Tonks deal with our complaint workload for England. Barclay Davies and his team in Wales perform a similar function in Wales.

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In 2007 BUS USERS UK handled 975 complaints and other issues, including 465 in Wales. The large Welsh total does not imply that bus services in Wales are especially poor, but that with its Welsh Assembly Government funding BUS USERS UK is able to maintain a higher profile — quite simply, more bus users in Wales know of our existence and that we are able to help them, something we are seeking to replicate in England and Scotland.

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9.Bus Appeals Body
Cases which cannot easily be dealt with by BUS USERS UK are passed on to the Bus Appeals Body, which in 2007 handled 88 cases. While many of these cases are resolved by agreement between the members of the Body, there are quarterly meetings in London, chaired by Lord Hogg of Cumbernauld, where cases which have not come to a natural agreement are discussed. Of the 88, 65 affected companies in the Big Five transport groups, and during the course of the year we noted a welcome improvement in the way complaints were handled by the Groups, leading to an overall reduction during the year compared with previous years.

The majority of cases were found in the passenger’s favour, although few passengers without a legitimate grievance pursue the matter as far as the Bus Appeals Body.

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10.Good Practice Guide
During 2007 BUS USERS UK published the latest edition of our Good Practice Guide, setting out what passengers expect from their bus service. The new edition expanded the publication considerably and is fully illustrated. It was warmly received by passengers, operators and transport authorities and many operators requested further supplies to distribute to their staff and use for staff training.

The Guide has also brought a number of requests for BUS USERS UK to undertake passenger audits of major bus companies, something which is being developed during 2008.

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11.Commercial Activities
We have developed a Quality Audit programme to assess the performance of bus companies from the passengers’ viewpoint. This is being trialled with an operator in northern England in early 2008 with a view to the facility being made available to other operators who require an objective, warts-and-all, audit of the whole passenger experience.

Other operators have shown interest in these audits and we expect that these will provide a useful additional source of income for BUS USERS UK as well as giving our officers first-hand experience of operations in different parts of the country.

Caroline Cahm is developing a Customer Service assessment programme that will allow successful operators to display a ‘BUS USERS UK Approved’ logo.

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12.BUS USERS UK – Who Are We?
BUS USERS UK, formerly known as the National Federation of Bus Users, is an independent group which was formed to give bus passengers a voice. We have the ear of all the major bus companies and a lot of the smaller ones too, of their trade organisation and of the Government and local authorities. BUS USERS UK is not aligned to any political party.

We aim:

• To strengthen the voice of bus users in the discussion of public transport issues
• To increase the influence of bus passengers on local and national decisions affecting bus services
• To develop good communication between bus companies and their passengers
• We organise local bus users surgeries, where passengers can get to talk to their bus managers and local government officers, tell them what they think — and hear their viewpoint, too
• We help with local problems, both for individuals and for groups
• We are represented on the Bus Appeals Body
• We encourage and promote good practice in the bus industry

President: Dr Caroline Cahm MBE PhD
Chairman: Gavin Booth
Treasurer: Stephen Le Bras
Operations Officer: Phil Tonks
Senior Officer for Wales: Margaret Everson
Officer for Wales: Barclay Davies
External Affairs Officer: Stephen Morris
Administrator: Susan Dawson
Office Administrator, Wales: Natasha Wedlock

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