Decision: The minutes of the meeting Friday, 29 January 2021 of the Overview and Scrutiny Task Group – Sustainable Transport were approved as a correct record.

Decision: The minutes of the meeting Thursday, 4 February 2021 of the Overview and Scrutiny Task Group – Sustainable Transport were approved as a correct record.

Members are reminded of their responsibility to declare any pecuniary interest in respect of matters contained in this agenda.

If you have a pecuniary interest you must withdraw from the call. Normally you should leave the call before the business starts to be discussed. You do, however, have the same right to speak as a member of the public and may remain in the room to enable you to exercise that right and then leave immediately. In either case you must not seek to improperly influence a decision  on the matter.

There were no declarations of interest.

To receive and consider the draft Final Report.

Alison Marland, Principal Planning Officer presented the report.

Members raised that for the first two recommendations, it needed to be clear that the Council did not wish to just lobby the County Council, but to also engage with, open a dialogue and attempt to influence the appropriate bodies to enhance services. It was desired for County Councillors to meet regularly with transport officers and report back. It was also hoped that transport companies, particularly bus companies met with the Council prior to changes being made to allow a proactive rather than a reactive response. If this process was in place and changes could not be prevented, an opportunity to inform those affected would be presented.

The Chair added that the services needed to be promoted to residents as if they were not used, they were at risk of being lost.

Relating to recommendations 3 and 4, it was raised by Alison that there was an attempt underway to find a named person to contact at Lancashire County Council.

Members believed that the recommendation should add “routinely” to ensure consistent communication.

For recommendations 5, 6, 7 and 8. Councillors wished to have a recommendation ensuring that Planning considered bus routes in new developments. Alison was happy to include the recommendation but added that the Climate Change Working Group would cover the green agenda, planning policy relating to the local plan, and she did not want to duplicate work. A suggested recommendation was for the Climate Change Working Group to investigate it further. Members also wished to stop developers from misrepresenting their developments with bus stops that were not on an active route.

Members wished to reword recommendation 5 to remove the phrase “to consider the possibility of”.

Members wished to strengthen recommendation 7 and said that Stagecoach had previously indicated that they were not interested in new routes and would only alter routes if it was financially beneficial. It was hoped that the Council could recommend potentially viable routes to act proactively. It was acknowledged that Stagecoach was not the only operator in the area and with further cooperation and dialogue viable routes could be implemented.

For recommendations 12 A,B,C and D Members wanted to set challenges and demonstrate aspiration and felt that to tackle social isolation, equity needed to be provided and a 20 minute rule implemented to ensure that every citizen was able to access some form of public transport within 20 minutes. It was decided that it would not be a recommendation, but to feature in the body of the report, linked to mobility and accessibility.

It was questioned if social isolation had increased for villagers and those in rural areas due to the deregulation of the buses and it was believed that Ministers, the Member of Parliament for Chorley and the Government should be lobbied to re-regulate the buses.

Members did not foresee Lancashire County Council doing anything when bus companies were liquidated and the example given was the 119 route, there was little to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 21.OS12