Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): We welcome the following Department for Infrastructure officials: Peter Rice, director of public transport operations; Leona Lees, project manager of the community transport (CT) phase 2 review; and John Conville, community transport review team. You are very welcome to the Committee today. We look forward to hearing from you. As you know, this is an important issue, particularly the community transport sector. We all know the benefits of community transport in our constituencies.

Members, I seek agreement that the evidence session be recorded by Hansard.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Thank you.

Peter, I know that you have a PowerPoint presentation for the Committee today, and you have also provided us with written evidence. If you do not mind briefly going through your PowerPoint presentation — five to 10 minutes — we will then move to members' questions.

Mr Peter Rice (Department for Infrastructure): Thanks, Chair and Committee members, and thanks for the invite and the opportunity to talk about community transport. I have a few slides that I will go through fairly quickly. The Committee was looking at its inquiry report from 2013 — 12 years ago — and a lot of things have changed since then.

I will give the Committee a recap. Back in 2013, the Department responded to the Committee's report, and we have sent you a copy of that response. At the time of the report, the Department was leading on a pilot project that ran between 2012 and 2015 to look at how integrated transport could be taken forward in a practical way, looking at community transport, Education, Health and Translink.

That pilot concluded in 2015, and there was a project appraisal and an evaluation report. Those led to a further project that sought to take some of the lessons from the pilot project and scale them up more widely across the Province. That was called the integrated public passenger transport project, and DFI was the lead Department on that. It was a challenging project to take forward, with multiple stakeholders holding multiple views. It also took place at a time of particular challenge around the establishment of the Education Authority (EA), reform within the Civil Service, including the Departments, and the political challenges that existed then. Coming out of that, a project appraisal identified a lot of those challenges and assessed how the project was progressing.

The outcome of the project appraisal was to pause the work. The project had two strands: it looked at community transport and Health working closely together; and at Education and Translink doing the same. However, due to the challenges being faced at the time, it was deemed unfeasible to take the project forward as envisaged. That is where the project got to.

Time has moved on, and we are into the current environment. The Committee will be fully aware of what the transport sector looks like at the minute. You have public transport funded by the Department, which is primarily Translink, Metro, Glider and Ulsterbus, and community transport, which is Dial-a-lift (DAL) and the Disability Action transport scheme (DATS). Outside the Department, you have community transport funded by other organisations and transport in the health sector and the education sector.

Since the 2013 report, there have been changes in the relationship between the Department and Translink. A partnership agreement that was signed last year sets out the governance arrangements between the Department and Translink and the roles and responsibilities of each. We also have a public service agreement (PSA), which is a five-year contract between the Department and Translink. It sets out the services that are to be delivered by Translink and the levels of performance that it should adhere to.

As part of those governance arrangements, the Department and Translink are taking forward a review of Ulsterbus services, looking primarily at how the services can be delivered more effectively and efficiently. That needs to take account of the school transport services that Translink provides for the Education Authority. On the other side, there is a community transport review. Leona and John are taking that forward on behalf of the Department. Community transport is there to try to address the gap in provision that is not being met by Translink and the rest of the private sector.

I will go back to the original Committee report. The arrangements for community transport have probably remained largely unchanged since 2013. That is one of the reasons why we were keen to undertake the review. Funding for this year is in the region of £5·4 million for the two streams of community transport, and the slide shows how that is allocated. The Disability Action transport scheme is funded under the Transport Programme for People with Disabilities (TPPD). The rural transport fund (RTF) primarily funds Dial-a-lift, which is also supported by DAERA through the assisted rural transport scheme (ARTS).

The overall aims of the community transport review are to consider the community transport vision for the longer term to ensure that the Department is maximising value for money and outcomes through investment in those areas; and to look at the role that community transport plays in the delivery of public transport. The review focuses primarily on what the Department for Infrastructure funds and not the streams that are funded by other Departments.

We have shared a copy of the phase 1 report with the Committee. Phase 1 did a lot of the groundwork to understand the existing arrangements in the community transport sector and the views of users, providers and other stakeholders. That information has been gathered and was shared with the Committee earlier this year.

The next part of the review, phase 2, commenced recently. As I mentioned, Leona and John will take that forward. It will build on the phase 1 report. It will analyse financial information and the performance of the community transport sector, with the intention of identifying key metrics in the sector's financial performance and the delivery of services. That is one of the key strands of the review.

The next stage is the service delivery model. What potential service delivery models could be provided? The existing arrangement has been in place since 2013: are there others? That part of the review looks across the wider spectrum. From the outcome of the first and second points on the slide, the review will decide what the potential service delivery model might be going forward and how that would be funded.

That is where we are with the community transport review. The work has commenced. We have started engagement with the various stakeholders, including the Community Transport Association, and that engagement will continue over the spring and summer. The intention is to complete the review for the autumn, which is quite a big challenge.

In parallel with the Department's review of community transport, we are trying to reinvigorate the cross-departmental working group, which is DFI, the Agriculture Department and the Department of Health. We are engaging with those other Departments to try to understand how community transport can help them with their activities. The cross-departmental working group is meeting today, so other colleagues who would have been here are at that meeting instead.

That completes my run-through of the review.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): That is great. Thank you very much. As I say, community transport is really important, and, as MLAs, we have seen in the past a strong lobby for funding from constituents. I see the benefit of community transport in my constituency, Fermanagh and South Tyrone, which is very rural.

I will kick off by asking about phase 1, which was supposed to be completed about 12 or 18 months ago. Why was there a delay in completing phase 1? You said, not to quote you, that from March to October is a challenging time frame. Do you expect there to be a run-on in phase 2 as well?

Mr Rice: We hope not. It is challenging, and, as you mentioned, there are multiple stakeholders, views and interests in this important area. Part of the challenge for the phase 1 review was making sure that it engaged with the full range of stakeholders in order to capture that information and their views. That took longer than anticipated. I was not personally involved in it, but I understand that that was one of the key reasons for the delay.

Looking ahead, we recognise that the time frame is challenging, but, to reassure ourselves and the Committee, we have looked at a project plan and put together a project initiation document (PID) to try to understand which key activities we need to do between now and the autumn and to plan those in a realistic manner to give ourselves a real opportunity of coming back in the autumn with a completed phase 2 report. Those are our intentions.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Was the delay in phase 1 really down to the length of time taken by the stakeholder engagement?

Mr Rice: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. Do you believe that you will be able to implement the findings of the review in full, given the budget context?

Mr Rice: The report of the review will look at different service delivery models and make a recommendation on what a future service delivery model might look like. The Minister will need to consider the report and make a decision. If we are to implement it, we will have to come back with an implementation plan. Depending on the service delivery model identified, there might be a need for additional funding, less funding or it might be reconfigured in different ways. That will be subject to the outcome of the review and analysis of the information that we receive.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I hope that there will not be less funding, given the tight financial constraints under which some of the community transport operators find themselves operating already. In my constituency, about 1,000 people have been turned away from journeys, and I hope that the funding models will reflect that.

That brings me to my next point. DFI, Department of Health and DAERA sit on that cross-departmental working group. Do you not think that there is a need for community transport to be at the table in that working group as well?

Mr Rice: At this stage, it does what it says on the tin: it is cross-departmental, rather than bringing in other stakeholders. Since the working group has not met in a while, there is an opportunity to reconfigure and re-energise it. My view, without talking to colleagues in Health and DAERA, is that we will probably want to keep it on a cross-departmental basis. The Department for Infrastructure works very closely with the community transport sector and understands what it could provide, and we will definitely share anything that comes out of the cross-departmental working group with the community transport sector. One of the things — I would not call it a lesson — that we valued from the first part of the review was the need to have close engagement with the community transport sector. We are trying to make sure that we embed that in the phase 2 review, and, obviously, that can then be used as input into the cross-departmental working group, if that makes sense.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Another aspect contained in the phase 1 report is figures on journeys and what they relate to — health, for example. As we know, with health transformation, it is important that people get to their appointments. Community transport plays a huge role in that, particularly in rural areas. Will that data be brought forward as part of phase 2 and looked at when examining whether other Departments need to step up the funding that they provide to community transport to enable more journeys in that area?

Mr Rice: I will bring in Leona in a second. The phase 2 review will want to look at service delivery models and what is done elsewhere, how effective, or otherwise, that is and how we try to translate that to what we are doing. It is focused primarily on the funding that DFI provides to community transport. One of the issues from previous work that was carried out from 2013 to 2018 was the significant challenge of trying to do a lot with multiple stakeholders. One of the recommendations that came out of that project appraisal was to look more at individual pilots and individual projects — try to take it in slightly smaller chunks, if I can put it that way — in order to make improvements. That is part of the approach that we are adopting for the community transport review. There is no doubt that our cross-departmental working group will want to understand how community transport can help Health, as you mentioned, Chair, and what that might look like. There is significant expenditure by Health on providing public transport to its services, so, if there is a way in which community transport can help to address that, we will want to hear about it from colleagues in Health and then hear about how we can build it into our potential service delivery model going forward. Leona, do you want to add anything?

Ms Leona Lees (Department for Infrastructure): Recently, I spoke to a group of stakeholders about something that we want to do in phase 2 initially: establish the fundamental cost of delivering a trip and the service that is doing that. Then, when it comes to answering a question, such as the question that you have just asked about providing additional journeys for health reasons or whatever, we will have a clear understanding of how much that would cost. Furthermore, if we have to ask another Department to part fund us for that, or to provide the funding, we will know what we are asking for. At the minute, it is difficult to say that we need x amount of funding to support us in delivering trips for the health sector, or whatever sector it might be. Therefore, the first thing that we want to establish from phase 2 is how much it should cost to deliver the additional services, if that is what we want to do, and how much it costs to deliver them now. If we know that, we will know what to ask for if we are to scale up the services, expand them or change them in any way. We were at the recent Community Transport Association (CTA) event here, as were you, Chair. The need that exists was obvious to me, but the required cost to meet that unmet need was not obvious. That will always be the problem when funding is tight: how much will it cost? That is what we want to get a good handle on in the first stages of phase 2. We will then be able to understand what we will be asking for when we move on to looking at the service delivery models and funding options.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I suppose that that will differ in different areas.

Ms Lees: There is not a unique cost per trip for the whole of Northern Ireland. Different factors will affect different areas differently, so it is about understanding what it should cost to deliver the services that a particular area wants to be delivered and then working out what that funding ask is. At the minute, we sort of know globally how much all those things cost, but we do not understand what is in behind that cost. We need to understand that to know where savings or efficiencies can be made to allow more money to go into the delivery of services, as well as where the synergies are from joining services and suchlike. That is the fundamental building block that we want to get established initially.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): In future sessions, the Committee will look at the regional transport strategy. I want to see how community transport fits in with that planning, because it provides a public transport service as well. Do you feel that it is included in that strategy?

Mr Rice: The regional transport strategy is taken forward by other colleagues in the Department. They have been engaged with a range of stakeholders across the region, and they are taking that forward in different geographical locations to represent the transport plans. My understanding is that community transport may have been engaged as part of that process, but I am not sure, Chair. May I take that away and come back to you?

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes, I would just like to check that. The Committee will look at that, but, if you could provide us with that information, that would be great. When we are looking at transport as a whole, it may be beneficial to have community transport as part of that, given the nature of the journeys and what community operators are doing in rural areas, which, as I said, is important.

There was a pilot programme, and I think that Dungannon was one of the areas in which it happened. You have the review of Ulsterbus services and the community transport review happening as well. Will there be a matching up of the findings of the two reviews, given the findings of the pilot programme? There is a need to look at how community transport can fill some of the public transport gaps in rural areas. There seems to be a bit of friction in the system. Getting the right people in the room at the one time to agree on what will happen seems to be a bit of an issue. Is that your understanding? In my area, there is maybe one bus a day bringing schoolkids in from rural areas. That is not helpful for people who need to get to jobs and that type of thing.

Mr Rice: Providing public transport in urban and rural areas to meet all needs is extremely challenging and complex, and, it is fair to say, public transport is probably unable to meet all those needs, given the dispersed nature of the population across the region.

I will go back to the pilot in Dungannon. An appraisal of that was done a number of years ago, and it recognised some of the significant challenges when you try to align multiple stakeholders with the same vision. There are, then, a lot of practical issues. If you are moving services across, you have different service delivery models, perhaps different staff, different pay and conditions and different funding streams. The recommendation from that appraisal was that, although the way in which the pilot was structured to try to achieve that integration was very noble and well meaning, it was deemed that the way in which it was being brought forward was not feasible and did not have a realistic opportunity of making a difference or of being able to be delivered.

When we look at the reviews at the minute, there is an element of, "Can we focus in on the community transport side?" We also look at public transport through Ulsterbus. The service delivery model for community transport has the opportunity to look elsewhere, and say, "There is a different way of delivering those services". I do not want to prejudge what that review will look like, but it might come up with a different model from the one that we have. If we are able to deliver better and more cost-effective services, we might be able to roll out wider community transport services that cater for some of that need. It is probably unlikely ever to cater for all the need because of the dispersed nature of our population, but I think that that service delivery model is our opportunity to try to explore that and expose what may be possible going forward.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I will now bring in other members, starting with the Deputy Chair.

Mr Stewart: Thank you, folks, for coming along today and for the answers so far. The Chair has covered the great value that we all place in community transport. It offers a service that is neither logistically nor commercially viable for any other provider and goes to places that no one else, realistically, would go. It does that for a fraction of the cost, and, to that end, it is another obvious example of investing to save, in that community transport does things that neither the Department nor a commercial entity could do. Sadly, we have seen in my patch, and others will have seen it elsewhere, that some operators, because they have been running to stand still for so long, financially and logistically, have not been able to survive and have gone under. First and foremost, what is your assessment of how vulnerable the community transport sector is? How many operators are holding on for dear life in the hope that the funding model will change or that additional services might become available through the transformation of care? If we lose them, we will find, as we have seen across the country, that they are very hard to bring back, because they are reliant on dedicated volunteers, as you know.

Mr Rice: We are very aware of the financial challenges not just across public transport but in community transport. The sector has made representations to officials, the previous Minister and the current Minister to highlight those issues and concerns. The previous Minister, Minister O'Dowd, was able to increase the funding in-year to alleviate some of those pressures. He was not able to alleviate all of them, and we recognised that at the time. In a constrained financial environment, the Minister highlighted the importance of community transport and sought to allocate additional funding in-year to try to address some of those concerns. Obviously, Minister Kimmins is considering the draft Budget for next year, and that will reflect the pressures across the wider Department, including community transport. Again, we as officials have made the Minister aware of what those pressures are, the scale of the financial pressures and the challenges faced by community transport. Of course, the Minister will need to take those into consideration along with all of the other pressures across the Department. As officials, we are fully aware of the pressure that community transport is under. We are fully aware of the benefits of community transport and the services that it delivers, and, obviously, within the constraints of the financial environment, we want to support it as much as possible.

The other aspect of the community transport review is the hope that, if we were able to bring forward a different service delivery model, there might be a better way of being able to fund the service and also, maybe, a way to drive out efficiencies so that we could deliver more for the amount that we will invest in community transport. Again, that is subject to looking at the review and going through that analysis. Leona, is there anything else that you want to add to that?

Ms Lees: The other point that the community transport organisations have raised with us — it is not new to the Committee or to any of us in the public sector — is the difficulty of single-year Executive Budgets. As you alluded to, because of how the organisations are set up as charities, that is what puts the most pressure on them. Not knowing from year to year how much money they well have puts a lot of pressure on them and creates a lot of uncertainty. It is outside our gift to do something about that, but multi-year Budgets and the rest of it are in the news all the time. We are aware of that, and, as officials, we try as best we can to provide them with as much certainty as we have. What we know, they know, and that is the approach that we will take with them going forward. We are certainly aware of the challenges.

Mr Stewart: We have all waxed lyrical on the problems with not having multi-year Budgets, and I find it remarkable that any charity of voluntary organisation is able to survive on that cliff edge of year-on-year funding. The point that I was trying to make is that we are in danger of losing these fantastic assets at a time when we are looking at a review that might increase the need for them. The ones that have gone would be very difficult to rekindle, because volunteers move on and find other ways to serve the community. So, at a time when we are looking at the transformation of care, integrating community transport with health provision and reviewing public transport with a view to integrating rural sectors, we may well see situations where the groups that we need down the line will have gone.

That is my big fear, and I sense that it is a fear of the officials. How do we plug that gap and ensure that we keep these vital assets in place? Given what you said, I fear that the funding will not be adequate. Do you have an assessment of how many of these groups are very vulnerable and where the current gaps are in that provision?

Mr Rice: There are multiple providers of community transport services across the region, and they all have different pressures and different scales of ask when it comes to funding. I do not have the information in front of me, but I do not think that there is a common thread across all of them, such as they all need x% more funding. It depends on where they are, and some of them have made it clear to our team that they are in financial straits. As members will be aware, some of them have curtailed the services that they are delivering to match the funding that has been provided. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution. I can reassure the Committee that officials are collecting that information and highlighting to the Minister what the industry needs, as it has deemed it, in order to deliver the service that it would like to deliver.

Mr Stewart: OK. That is useful.

I have two small, final points, Chair, if I may. The first one — the Chair covered this to a degree — is about how Translink might seek to integrate. How is that currently being looked at, or how will it be looked at down the line? Who is overseeing it? Will Translink head that up with community transport, or will the Department do that? I am just trying to get a flavour of how community transport could assist in those areas and link up with Translink when it comes to the provision that may or may not be there at the minute.

Mr Rice: As part of the review of community transport, we will want to look at what the service delivery model might look like. There is not an ask of Translink to work with community transport to say, "OK, you deliver x and we deliver y". Translink is delivering the services that we have contracted it to deliver through the PSA. That might change in the future. Through funding arrangements, Translink might make changes to that service delivery, in agreement with Department, or it might be that, as a result of the transport plans that the Chair referred to earlier, we envisage a future public transport service that is slightly different from what we have today in those different regions. To go back to your question, in that context, we would look at the service delivery model for community transport to see how it could deliver services within the current Translink public, central service, if that makes sense.

Mr Stewart: Yes, that does make sense. I know that it may exist in some places, but in my patch, for example, in rural East Antrim, some people are able to avail themselves of community transport. It picks them up at their house, takes them to the park-and-ride facility, and they go from there into Belfast. That system works well, and it does not seem to be beyond the wit of us all to try to solve that problem by supporting it more, developing it and trying to get more people onto public transport. Sadly, too many people, particularly elderly people, are not able to avail themselves of that service. If that were an integrated model, it would work really well. I am just trying to get my head around how it is being looked at.

Mr Rice: There is no reason why that cannot happen today.

Mr Stewart: Funding.

Mr Rice: Well, yes. The constraint is nothing to do with policy.

Mr Stewart: Yes.

Mr Rice: It is to do with the level of funding that community transport has, which then impacts on the services that can be delivered.

Mr Stewart: Yes. OK.

The final question is about accessibility. More and more often, we hear that there are no longer as many taxi providers who have fully accessible taxis as there should be, and there is a greater demand for those. I want to get a flavour from you of how strong the community transport sector is in supporting people who are in wheelchairs and who have mobility issues. Should we be concerned about that? Should we be doing more to promote that?

Mr Rice: Leona or John might know more about the detail than I do, but, as far as I am aware, all our community transport providers have fully accessible vehicles so that they can provide that service. They are not taxis: they are buses. From an accessibility perspective, those vehicles should be compliant.

Ms Lees: All the vehicles in the community transport sector are accessible. Community transport providers talk about the lack of accessible taxis. On occasion, rather than wasting a whole bus to take one person somewhere, they use taxis to supplement their bus services if they need to transport one or two individuals. They would prefer to hire a taxi to do that, but they have said that, particularly in rural areas, there is an issue with the number of accessible taxis in general in Northern Ireland and that those that exist are heavily utilised. We are aware of that through the community transport sector, but taxi policy lies outside our branch.

Mr Stewart: Yes, I appreciate that.

Ms Lees: I think that the Committee has had officials giving evidence on what they have been doing recently on taxi licensing.

Mr Stewart: Thank you. Thanks very much for your time.

Mr Boylan: Thank you very much for your presentation and the answers that you have given so far. This, unfortunately, arose as a result of COVID, but we have been given a new opportunity to look at how things are delivered across the board. Do you know what I mean? Searching questions and answers have arisen from that. I want to record my thanks to the Community Transport Association. Down my way, they cover gaps in transport and but also tackle social isolation and all those things. That is vital.

I know that you carry out reviews, but I am going to reference the CTA's 'Mapping Northern Ireland: State of the Sector Report 2025'. It did a state of the sector report in 2010 but has updated it. We should, at this stage, have a good understanding, from the early indications of the findings of that report, of the needs and the work that everybody is doing across the board, and we should have a full analysis of that. What have we learned from the CTA's report and early indications? What is the new role going to be? I appreciate that there is a funding issue; there will always be a funding issue, but we have to tackle and address the need as best we can. To be honest, community transport is covering those gaps. Having learned from the first part of your review, what evidence will you gather in the second part? More importantly, where do you see CTA going forward from the piece of work that it did on the state of sector? Will you outline anything that you have learned, and what can we deliver, going forward?

Mr Rice: I may pass over to Leona in a second.

Mr Boylan: I know that it is a difficult one, folks —

Mr Rice: That is why I am passing over to Leona.

Mr Boylan: — but it is just that I have been around for a long time.

Mr Rice: I mentioned that one of the important things for phase 2 of the review is to make sure that we engage with the community transport sector. As part of that engagement, we have set up a small board to oversee the review. The board is made up primarily of departmental officials, but we are also bringing somebody from the Community Transport Association to sit on the board to oversee that work to try to ensure that our direction of travel and our initial findings align with it. It has an opportunity to input into the review at an early stage. In addition to CTA being on the board, we will engage with the group and the individual providers to ensure that we capture that information.

I will pass over to Leona to comment on the annual report

Ms Lees: I will preface this by saying that I joined the Department quite recently — just before Christmas — to work specifically on the review. I do not have a background in transport or community transport, as such, so I am actively learning and trying to pick up the lessons that you talked about from the CTA report and our phase 1 report. The thing that stands out for me from what I have learned from all the good work of my predecessors is that we have a very clear understanding of the need for community transport and its potential in terms of what it could do. However, what is missing is an understanding of what it costs to deliver community transport and all the other things that we would like it to deliver. The strategy around our vision for community transport and what we want it to do is somewhat absent. I want to start to tease all that out in phase 2 of the review to understand how much it will cost to do the things that we want to do so that we can build on it. We have the robust need and the value that it adds in terms of the stuff that CTA does with the social value metric that it is working on. We have those two pieces of the puzzle, so —

Mr Boylan: I appreciate that. My point is that there is a very good report that we can learn from, and we need to do that.

Ms Lees: Absolutely.

Mr Boylan: Let us be honest, we have been at this for a long time. To be fair, we want to get it right. There should not be firefighting for funding every year. I agree with multi-year Budgets and everything else that everybody said, but I wanted to reference that report because there is good information in it.

I could speak about this subject all day, but I will make two other points. Will you comment on the impact of the 10B permits, on your discussions with CTA and on its views on time frames and all that?

Mr Rice: The 10B permits seem to have been around for a long time. There is ongoing work in the Department to look at the 10B permits. I am not sure whether the Committee has been briefed by officials on that. The 10B permits will be considered by a separate team. However, as part of the work Leona and John are taking forward, they will work closely with that team to understand any issues with the 10B permits. The initial information from the phase 1 report is that the 10B licence is not necessarily a major constraint on the delivery of services. Unfortunately, the major constraint is funding. However, we will look at the 10B licences and factor that into our review in phase 2.

Mr Boylan: So, we are getting closer to the funding model. I know that you are only newly in post, but —

Ms Lees: Yes.

Mr Boylan: — we will take it that you have said that today. It was down to funding because we know there is a need, and when a delivery programme is developed, we will know what the funding model will be. Is there any learning from elsewhere, particularly from the 26 counties, that will influence some of the conversations or recommendations going forward?

Mr Rice: We will look across the board, whether it is at other parts of the island, across the water or in other parts of the world, at how community transport services are delivered, as part of our consideration. Do you want to add anything, Leona?

Ms Lees: The phase 1 team did a literature review on the other jurisdictions, and there is quite a volume of information for us to draw on to feed into the service model delivery and funding piece that did not make it into the final phase 1 report. We will certainly pick up on that to learn from what other people are doing. If community transport is being done in a better way, we will feed that into how it would work in our jurisdiction.

Mr Boylan: Finally, the CTA takes responsibility, across the board, and the Chair has mentioned the health sector. Are you having conversations with other Departments about funding? The funding is difficult, but if we are going to crack it, and we accept that CTA will fill gaps, we need to talk to the other Departments about developing the funding model. Can you comment on that? You may not be able to comment for other Departments, but we need to have a serious conversation about it.

Mr Rice: It is a very valid point, but it is also very challenging. As part of the cross-departmental working group, we have worked with colleagues in Health to understand their needs and where they envisage community transport helping to provide some services. That will be fed into the review. If we go back to the work that was done from 2013 until 2018, when there was the noble idea of integrating health, education, public and community transport, challenges arose from that. After facing those challenges and not being able to progress as we had envisaged, we are trying to deal — if I can use that word — with community transport as it is now rather than trying to do too much too soon. We have a better chance if we focus our efforts on individual areas to improve the service. If we can get community transport into a better place than it is today, we would all welcome that. That is our focus. Rather than trying to do too much, as we did previously, we are trying to focus on individual areas and take it piece by piece.

Mr Boylan: As long as you refer to the report. A lot of the information is in it. Thank you.

Mr McMurray: Thank you for the presentation. We have all acknowledged the important role that community transport plays. It is good that we are looking at its role to stabilise and develop community transport.

I will come back to Mr Boylan's point. Does the Department see the connection between the funding model and the 10B permits? On account of how licensing works now, it is quite a financial undertaking for community transport providers. Have you looked at that?

Mr Rice: I will pass that one to Leona.

Ms Lees: The 10B licence is not that expensive. It costs a lot more to have a full bus operator licence. We will definitely look at relationship between licensing and how the organisations operate — what bearing that has on their bottom line — as part of the financial performance review. That will help us to fully understand the costs to the organisations and where there are, perhaps, opportunities for government to ease a financial burden that we put on them through a licensing scheme or whatever else. As part of the review, we hope to tease out those aspects of the operational environment in which they work.

Mr McMurray: Thank you. I will stick to practical matters that were raised in conversation with community transport organisations. Council boundaries are sometimes a big constraint on community transport because it cannot necessarily travel between them. Will the review look at that?

Ms Lees: Yes. The review will also look at the operational areas and the rules of the scheme that organisations operate under. Once you get to the edge of your boundary, you stop. Between the Department and the organisations, we are conscious that people in the boundary areas are, perhaps, missing out. If you live in Toome, for example, you are part of the area with a Ballyclare-based organisation, which can take you to Antrim or Ballyclare. If you live in Toome, however, you probably want to go to Magherafelt because it is closer, but that organisation cannot take you there. Membership of the scheme and whether you can choose to be in one area or another, depending on geography, are things that we hope to investigate and make recommendations on.

Mr Durkan: Thanks to team for coming along. No one could accuse us of doing "too much, too soon". As you outlined, community transport services grew to address a gap that was not met by existing public and private markets. You said that the model was largely unchanged since 2013. How has the funding fluctuated in that time? John Stewart rightly identified that the community transport sector is struggling. Some of the gaps that it plugged have reappeared, and the contraction of the public transport market means that there are now gaps that were never there before. Has an assessment of that been done?

Mr Rice: I have the report in front of me, but I cannot find the figures. The phase 1 report looked at historical funding of community transport providers. The figures for the past number of years, which were distorted by COVID, show a reduction in funding from several years ago; I do not have the percentages. There is no doubt that there are financial pressures across the sector. As I mentioned earlier, in the 2024-25 financial year, Minister O'Dowd was able to increase the funding for community transport in-year to alleviate some of those pressures, but the trend was a reduction in funding from several years ago to where we are today. That reflects the constrained financial environment of the Department and the public sector as a whole.

Mr Durkan: The increase was from an already-reduced opening baseline.

Mr Rice: Yes.

Mr Durkan: There was still less funding than there had been; it was just that the cut was not as big.

The cross-departmental working group is extremely important. I see that it was established in 2023. I think that one was set up — maybe it did not have the same name — when Danny Kennedy was Minister for Regional Development. Obviously, the work of that group is extremely important. It is important that we break down the silos that clearly exist between, and even within, some Departments. The Department's problem seems to be the cost of public transport. Others need to realise the value of it to them.

You said that the group has not met in quite a while. When was the most recent meeting?

Mr John Conville (Department for Infrastructure): It may have been in October or November. I think that it had been due to meet in January, but that was put off until today.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Is that October 2024?

Mr Rice: Yes.

Mr Durkan: I am relieved. That is not great, but it is better than what I feared, which was that it had not met since that inaugural meeting in 2023. There were issues because of the lack of an Assembly and ministerial direction, but we cannot afford to have what appears to be a lack of urgency around the issue as well. I am not levelling that accusation at any of the officials here today, but it is clearly an issue that exercises us, as Committee members, because we see the benefits of those schemes, and we know the effect that a reduction in them has on our constituents.

I am glad that Andrew touched on the cross-boundary issues. There is another issue that might predate some of you. We often talk about decarbonisation and the role of public transport in it — we have to get more people on buses — and that applies to community transport as well. Three years ago, community transport organisations were given funding totalling £1·3 million to purchase electric vehicles (EVs). It is my understanding — I was able to drag this out in 2023 — that 13 operators benefited from that funding. Six of them acquired vehicles, but I think that another seven paid for vehicles that they never received due to the manufacturer's going into administration. Has the Department, or the sector, been able to recoup any of that money? I do not know the exact calculation, but you can divide £1·3 million by 13 and assume that they received £100,000 each. Has that £700,000, which the sector should have received, and from which people should have benefited, just evaporated?

Mr Rice: I will bring in John in a second, after giving him a chance to think about it. My understanding is that £1·3 million was allocated from the Department to community transport providers. Therefore, it went to the sector. I think that the fact that that manufacturer went into administration means that that money was lost. Those individual providers may have tried to seek recompense through whatever the administration process was, but I suspect that that money has been lost.

Mr Conville: That is pretty much it. I do not think that the administration process has finished yet, but it is probably unlikely that unsecured creditors or whatever will be able to recoup that.

Mr Durkan: Those poor community transport providers are probably well down the pecking order. Maybe it is too late now, but could the Department have a role in supporting them in that regard? That is public money that has gone down the drain, essentially. It is scandalous. It is not the fault of the Department, either.

Thank you for coming in. It is important that more urgency be applied to getting the work done and that more funding be directed towards the sector.

Mr K Buchanan: Thanks, Leona, Peter and John, for coming in. I have a couple of questions, which follow on from Cathal and Mark's a little bit.

What are the objectives of the cross-departmental working group that you talked about, which is meeting today?

Mr Rice: It is really about engaging with DAERA and Health to understand their needs and where community transport can help to deliver some of their objectives. It is about trying to explore the options for community transport to help those Departments to deliver their services.

Mr K Buchanan: If I go to any meeting, I want there to be a goal at the end of it. I am not meeting people just for fun; I want there to be an objective or to score a goal. What is the goal that you, as DFI, want to score out of the cross-departmental meetings?

Mr Rice: At the minute, it is about trying to explore, with our colleagues in those other Departments, where there are opportunities. If we are able to identify those potential opportunities, the "goal", as you put it, is to see how we can do that — how community transport can deliver some or all of the services that it could provide. Then you get into what the service delivery model for that would be and how you would fund it. The initial ask, really, is to try to understand the scope of how community transport can help them.

Mr K Buchanan: When will we know that the cross-departmental working group has been successful? Will we get a report that says, "We've had our meetings over the past number of years, and we recommend that we do a, b and c"?

Mr Rice: We can do that —

Mr K Buchanan: But will we, Peter?

Mr Rice: It is up to the Committee. If it seeks — [Interruption.]

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Sorry: Mark, your mic is still on. Thank you. Sorry for interrupting you, Peter.

Mr Boylan: You do not have to answer Mark's question.

Mr Rice: It is outside my remit, I think. [Laughter.]

The Committee is fully entitled to seek an update on the outworkings of that working group. Chair, if you want us to, we can come back in six or 12 months with an update. We will say six months, because I heard the word "urgency" mentioned several times. We can come back within six months with an update on how that has progressed, what the goals and objectives have been and whether we have achieved them.

Mr K Buchanan: That would be good.

The Chair touched on healthcare and the transport that the CTA and all the partners provide. Some of those guys will tell you that around 40% of their work is healthcare-related. Will your Department claw back 40% from the Health Minister?

Mr Rice: At this minute in time, the answer is no. We are providing that funding for the community transport providers to provide a range of services, which includes enabling their members to access healthcare facilities. For other members, it is about accessing shopping or other services. We, as a Department, are providing the funding for them to provide those services. There is no mechanism for us to claw back that money from any other Department. The cross-departmental working group is looking at whether there are opportunities for community transport to better or more formally help Health to deliver some of its services. Then you get into what the mechanism would be for service delivery and funding — who would pay for it.

Mr K Buchanan: I asked the Northern Trust for its total cost in 2023-24. In 2023-24, the total expenditure on transport that was not provided by the Northern Trust's in-house services was £2·355 million. Bear in mind that that includes taxis and private ambulances; I appreciate that a private ambulance is different from community transport. In the Northern Trust alone, £2·355 million is going on taxis and private ambulances. I represent the Magherafelt and Cookstown area. The trust is paying for a taxi to drive to Cookstown to lift somebody and drive them to Antrim. We have to use that service cleverly so that it can stop in Magherafelt or wherever. Leona, you said that somebody who lives in Toome would go to Ballyclare. I appreciate all that, but there has to be savings there. I cannot understand why it is taking so long for the trust to work out, for example, that there is an empty bus sitting in Magherafelt and it is paying for a taxi to drive past it from Cookstown. Why has a cross-departmental working group that has been meeting for years not worked out that that would be cheaper? I am simplifying it — I appreciate that it is not as simple as £2·355 million jumping straight across — but there has to be savings.

Mr Rice: I understand where you are coming from. I suppose that that hits to the core of the previous review back in 2013-18. As a community, we recognise that different providers provide different services in the public transport sector, whether it is Infrastructure, Education, the private sector or Health. Is there not a mechanism by which to try to bring that together in a more integrated fashion? That is a noble goal that, I think, we would all sign up to. When we went through that work, we did a pilot in the Dungannon area that looked at a number of issues, including how community transport could provide more dedicated services for Health. We turned that noble idea into a pilot to identify opportunities, but how do you turn that into something real and tangible that can be rolled out across the region? It is challenging, because different Departments and stakeholders have different objectives, there is different legislation for those organisations and the operators have different pay and conditions. That was one of the main reasons why that pilot did not translate into a new integrated service. It is still a noble objective, but the practicality of getting from where we are today to that has been challenging.

I go back to what I said earlier. In the assessment of the project, there was a recommendation that, rather than trying to do all of that at once, we should go back and look at trying do it for individual projects, and that is the approach that we have come round to. I fully accept that having a fully integrated service is the ultimate goal and would be much better, but we are where we are, and we are trying to do it through a piecemeal approach.

Mr K Buchanan: OK. I have a final question. Leona, you mentioned the need to work out the exact costs. When you drill down into that, will you look at it from a broad Northern Ireland CTA point of view or will you look at it from the point of view of each area and each provider? Some providers may be more efficient than other providers in the CTA. Will you look at each area or the broad cost? I appreciate that there are rural areas and urban areas in which it can be more or less cost-effective.

Ms Lees: We will look at each area individually. You may have noticed that the phase 1 report has a breakdown of the cost per trip for each provider. The figures in that report were taken from the providers' annual accounts and their stated expenditure, but we do not understand what they have put into their expenditure lines, so we do not know whether we are comparing like with like or apples with oranges. We will go to each provider to try to understand its expenditure in a year and to make sure that every provider is apportioning costs in the same way, and is including everything that should be included and not including things that should not be included, so that we get as accurate a figure as possible for each provider. At that point, we will take into account the factors that vary between one area and another that would account for one provider having a higher cost than another because, for example, it is in a more dispersed rural area.

Mr K Buchanan: All the apples should be the same, and all the oranges should be the same.

Ms Lees: Yes, once you have allowed for reasonable differences. We will look at the overall cost for the whole of Northern Ireland as well, as part of our summing up that information.

Mr K Buchanan: Thank you. I appreciate that.

Mr Boylan: Keith raises a good point. Surely, Leona, even if there are multi-year Budgets, the CTA should have a business plan for its delivery every year. That is what we are aiming for. I agree about the need to try to save funds. The issue is complicated across the board in the Departments, but the CTA needs to come with a business plan or a development plan — whatever you like to call it — and say, "This is what we are going to deliver, plus or minus other duties". That is what we need to get to. Are we close to getting that?

Ms Lees: We have something like that at the minute. John can keep me right if I go wrong. Each year, each provider has to put forward a business case to the Department in order to bid for the grant funding, so we have that business case model. What we do not have is the drill-down of that detail behind to really understand the costs and the differences between one operator and another and between one scheme and another, such as the DAL service and the DATS. We are on a journey, to keep the metaphors contextual.

Mr Boylan: We are on a journey, and there is a need for stronger conversations across the Departments, to be fair.

Ms Lees: We are trying to move it on in order to get a better understanding of all those costs so that we can make better decisions.

Mr Boylan: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I want to come back to a few things. During the conversation, I heard it said that having integrated public transport is "a noble goal" but that it is "challenging". To me, that just says, "It is too difficult to do so we are not going to do it". That is shameful when we are trying to get people on to public transport and reduce reliance on cars. It is a fundamental problem in rural areas. I represent a rural area: there are no bus links in some of the towns that I represent. Community transport could play a vital role. What are the challenges that you think make it insurmountable for it to be progressed further?

Mr Rice: In the review of community transport, we are looking at how the community transport sector can deliver the services that you mention more effectively and efficiently and, potentially, provide more of them for a funding model across the region, including your constituencies. The intention of the review is to see how we can try to do that.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Is it also about seeing how Translink can play a partnership role with community transport.

Mr Rice: Translink will deliver the services as we have set out in the PSA. Our review of community transport will look at how community transport can supplement those services. The services that are delivered by Translink and set out in the PSA may change over time to reflect the outworkings of the various transport plans and what future service delivery might be. Our focus in the community transport review is on the community transport sector and how it can deliver services in its areas.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I do not see rural public transport expansion, and something needs to happen. We have talked about urgency in the Committee today. It is fundamental that rural areas' needs are taken into consideration as part of that.

We have talked about the cost per trip and the review of funding in phase 2. A degree of fluidity needs to be built in, because we are looking at a sector in where there are insurance costs, vehicle maintenance costs and, as Mark touched on, costs on the EV side of things. Will that fluidity be built in, particularly given that, as the Finance Minister indicated in the Chamber this week, we will move to a multi-year Budget cycle?

Ms Lees: Yes, absolutely. Another thing that we want to do is identify opportunities where we, as a Department, can help those organisations to realise economies of scale on some of the costs that you mentioned — maintenance costs and things like that. There is an opportunity for us to work with providers to help them through government procurement. We could put in place their maintenance contracts or leverage the government resources that already exist, through Translink or whatever, to allow them access to cheaper maintenance, cheaper fuel and things like that. We hope to identify opportunities by digging into providers' costs to see where their money goes and whether there are ways to help them save money. If we cannot give them more money through grant funding, we can certainly try to help them to spend less money on things that we can buy for them collectively. That would allow more money to go towards services rather than overheads. Those are things that we want to look at.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): So, you see inefficiencies in the system. What inefficiencies do you think that there are?

Ms Lees: I do not know, because we have not looked into them, but I anticipate that there will be things like that, and that is what we will look for. You do not know until you turn over the stone what is under the rock, but there will be something there. I do not doubt that there will be opportunities for the Department to find ways to help those organisations.

Mr Rice: To clarify, Chair: we are not saying, at this stage, that there are inefficiencies, as we have not yet done that analysis. However, we recognise that there is potential to deliver more efficiencies using other means, whether that is through central procurement or Translink, to help them with maintenance and/or fuel costs. We are not saying that there are inefficiencies; we are saying that there is potential to drive better efficiency through the use of other resources. That is about us going into the review with our eyes open and identifying those opportunities at an early stage.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): I have a last question. We are looking at the funding models for community transport associations. As the Deputy Chair pointed out, a lot of community associations are in a precarious situation. Has any analysis been done, particularly by that cross-departmental working group, of what the costs would be if we did not have community transport in place in Northern Ireland?

Mr Rice: I am not aware of anybody having asked what the outcome would be if there were no community transport. In financial terms, we would not spend the £5·4 million. In service delivery terms, there would be a significant impact on the members of those groups and the services with which they are provided. There could be a financial impact on those individuals, because they might have to find other means of accessing transport, or, indeed, they may not be able to access transport at all.

Ms Lees: I agree. In my research, I have not come across any analysis of what would happen if CT disappeared overnight and was not there. However, I suspect that there would be a social impact in how it affects individuals. The CTA is working on the social value indices to draw out what community transport contributes to the economy: to be able to say, for example, "The number of trips you have done puts this much money into the local economy". When the CTA develops that more fully, there may be a way of assessing it and saying, "If community transport were not there, that is how much you would lose in money to your local economy and in social value".

Mr Rice: Just to be clear, Chair: the review is of how we deliver community transport services; it is not being done with the intention of removing community transport.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): It is fundamental. If we were to look at what the costs would be, we would see that there would be a lot of socio-economic impacts. One example is in health, as people would not be able to make their hospital appointments. The knock-on impact would be huge.

Mr Durkan: Chair, I would like to make your question a wee bit less hypothetical and easier to get information on. John referred earlier to places where providers have fallen by the wayside, if you like, or had to withdraw services. It might be easier to focus on those situations and see what the costs were there, rather than on what the costs might be should things go away. Look at where it has happened and find out what the costs have been by speaking to former service users and other service providers, such as Health.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Maybe that can be taken back.

Ms Lees: We can potentially weave that into phase 2 of our report. Based on data that we already have, we could do an analysis to put in a narrative around the impact of not having services or of cutting services.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): OK. It would be useful to see that, if it can be woven into phase 2. We look forward to seeing that come October.

Ms Lees: I should clarify that the team is John and me: there are two of us working on this. I say that just to manage expectations.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Yes.

Mr Boylan: Chair, you keep mentioning Health. If we talk about a DFI funding model without having a proper discussion with other Departments about responsibilities that lie outside DFI, that is the wrong starting point. I know that a group has been set up. We need to have a serious conversation about that. We need to raise the funding from DFI in order to deliver the model that is presented to you. The Chair mentioned all the services, including GP services, that people need to access in the health sector and across the board. That will be a challenge for DFI budgets, so we should have a proper conversation about it.

Mr Rice: That will be picked up by the cross-departmental working group.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Thank you for your time in coming to the Committee today. There are two fundamental points for you to follow up on. The first is inclusion of community transport in the regional transport strategy and the engagement that there has been between community transport and DFI on that. The other is that you said that you would report back to the Committee on the outworkings of the cross-departmental working group on a six-monthly basis. It would be good if the Committee could receive not just a stock report but one that contains the key themes that were discussed in the cross-departmental working group and the solutions or achievements that have come out of it.

Mr K Buchanan: Who leads that departmental working group?

Mr Rice: DFI is the lead Department.

Mr K Buchanan: OK, fair enough.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): The next report to the Committee will come around October then, so that should tie in nicely if all goes to plan. It would be great if you could do that.

Mr Rice: We will plan on that basis.

The Chairperson (Mrs Erskine): Super; that is perfect. Thank you very much for your time; it is much appreciated.