Hampshire County Council rethink on funding cut for Community First services

A CHARITY operating community transport in the New Forest has hailed the county council’s decision not to cut all of its funding so it can carry on helping the area’s most vulnerable residents.

Community First’s chief executive Tim Houghton, said the news was “good news” and a “real positive” for its community transport service of ‘Connect’ Dial A Ride and Call and Go services.

Initially, the county council proposed withdrawing all the £800k funding for these services and non-statutory local buses to save £1.7m, which could help the administration fill the budget gap of the increased £175m deficit by 2025/26.

However, after the second round of public consultation, the county council has considered a reduction of £587,000 instead.

Mr Houghton said: “It’s good news. We see it as a real positive step. We’re very grateful that Hampshire County Council has taken the time to listen to the consultation and reflect on some of the views that have been expressed through consultation. It has also taken the time to consider alternative ways in which they can protect some funding for community transport.

“There are still some cuts, so naturally, we’re disappointed but understand the difficulty that’s facing in Hampshire. There are some cuts around the funding for some of the other services we deliver, like ‘Wheels to Work, which is the moped high scheme for people to get to work, and around some of the scheduled bus services we run.

“But the real win is that they’re going to protect the funding for community transport, which is the ‘Dial-and-ride’, the ‘Call-to-go’ and the ‘Group Hire’ services, which are the services that a lot of vulnerable people and people with disabilities rely on and what we were lobbying to try and keep.”

Mr Houghton explained that under the new proposal, some of the routes will now do school runs in the mornings and afternoons during term time, which will be “cost-effective” for the council and, at the same time, allow the protection of the service, a “win-win” for both sides.

“The caveat for that is that they want us to try and include within that some school contracts, so we’re developing a new model. The big issue for Hampshire, and one of the reasons why they’re facing such a big deficit in their budget and an increasing deficit, is because of the rising costs of school transport for Special Educational Needs pupils.

“We think we can do an offer where we can run some school transport in the morning and the afternoon during term time, and then in the middle of the day and outside of those school run hours, we can offer some community transport.”

Despite the reduction of funding and the new model they will implement, Mr Houghton said that “everybody that wants to travel will still be able to travel” with “slightly less choice on the times” but that they will be able to travel.