Transport and Access to Services
Action Learning Pilot
On 16th October we launched our new exciting project, where we are experimenting with the extension of our existing LINk into the new service areas of transport and access to services.
For more information, download the press release for the day.
The focus of the project is to explore how local involvement in strategy for transport and access to services can be strengthened, in order to promote improved understanding of community based needs and interests, and to bring about practical and positive improvements in services.
The project will:
- Create an action learning environment where all stakeholders can reflect together on engagement and delivery issues. This will include information-sharing, and a more joined up approach to networking on access issues.
- Experiment with innovative approaches to engagement, using local people as champions and researchers of their own communities, and targeting more excluded communities on their own terms to prioritise their needs and issues.
- Carry out action research into how local, area, county-wide and regional initiatives do or don’t connect with each other in the interests of local people.
- Explore the current infrastructure for strategy development with key stakeholders including dialogue across public, private and community based providers.
- Focus on the needs and interests of specific target groups – young, older and vulnerable people wishing / needing to travel.
The outcomes will relate to:
- Improved knowledge and skills within the community to strengthen the public’s chances of having an equal say in issues that affect them
- Improved infrastructure for decision-making about access and transport, that is linked through cross-cutting processes to other relevant service areas
- Improved responsiveness of services to the needs and interests of local people on a holistic basis
- A stronger focus on the most excluded communities
Here is the structure for the project
The project sets out to recruit a project steering group, and will also invite existing transport and access groups to meet up, along with local champions from each of the community forum areas across the county. The proposed role for transport and access champions is:
1. Publicise the Transport and Access LINk within the local community
2. Ensure that the views of target groups (young, older and vulnerable people) are sought and taken into account.
3. Play an active part in identifying local issues, concerns and priorities, using community-led research methods
4. Offer a channel for local views and priorities to be fed in to area and county-wide decision-making, and vice versa.
5. Participation in a county-wide Transport and Access to Services champions group to help set area and county-wide priorities and influence decision-making
6. Participation in collecting case studies and establishing pilot activities
Update January 2010
The extended LINk is moving forward. The original plan to link up with transport champions through each community have been adapted, as plans for the full 27 community forums are not taking a clear course across the county. So what we have decided to do is to identify a range of different ways of getting involved with communities, and to date these include:
Norham and Islandshire Community Forum – taking up issues relating to access to new hospital developments in Berwick
Belford and Seahouses Community Forum – supporting a special event on transport and access
Deaf and Disability Network - access issues relating to public transport – spoken messages, bus stations, accessible doors – exploring how DDA considerations figure in strategy development and where the buck stops
Swarland Parish Council – proposal by local community to reinstate a withdrawn route through the village
Young people’s access to social and leisure in the evenings, free travel for 13-19, cycle track campaign – all of these will be highlighted at a ‘Democracy’ conference at Alnwick Garden on 20th March. The LINk is liaising with the Take Part project in North Northumberland.
Agreement to work with Area Partnerships to clarify their role in decisions in the County around access and transport
Clarification of what is meant by, and what is on offer relating to travel planning and journey planning, and wider concerns about up to date and accessible information are being raised with the Council’s transport department.
Contact with the Council Cabinet’s Transport Champion.
The LINk is inviting tenders from community organisations working closely with more excluded groups of people to make sure their issues are brought forward. We are also working with Marc Johnson of CAN in the north of the county to help take issues forward.
The LINk is participating in the City Region Third Sector Transport Group
Project Group Notes
Here are some useful links to information and current consultations about transport and access within Northumberland.
Northumberland Local Transport Plan 2006-11
....and Progress Report 2008
The 2008 LTP Progress Report sets out the impact we have had on local transport in the first two years of Northumberland's second Local Transport Plan. It covers the achievements made during 2006 to 2008 and looks forward to 2011, assessing the risks and opportunities for the remaing years of LTP2
Follow this link to take part in a Car Parking Survey (launched in July 2009)
Home to School Services
In the National Travel Survey: 2008, it was found that just under half of primary school children walked to school in 2008, with a further 43% of children being driven to school. For secondary school children, two fifths of pupils travelled on foot, while a fifth travelled by car and a further fifth used local bus services. In 2008, 51% of households in the lowest income quintile had no
car compared with 11% in the highest income quintile.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/personal/mainresults/nts
2008/
Northumberland's situation is very different with home to school bus provision costing millions. There have been a number of initiatives linking home to school transport to other community transpot needs in the county, and with the North Northumberland hoem to school service currently out to tender, now is a good time to look at the whole issue.
Here is an update from the company that has taken over the East Coast mainline
For more details please contact
Newcastle Heritage Partnership
C/O Ben Smith
Historic Environment Section
Strategy Housing, Planning & Transportation
Regeneration
Newcastle City Council
Civic Centre
Barras Bridge
Newcastle upon Tyne
Tel: 0191 277 7194
info@northumberlandlink.org.uk
www.northumberlandlink.org.uk
