Transport to day services consultation 2016

Purpose	The county council continues to face an unprecedented financial challenge. Over the next five years to 2020/21 the council needs to make savings of £262m on top of those agreed within previous budget processes. This extremely difficult financial picture is the result of continued cuts in funding by Government, rising costs and rising demand for key services. Based on current spending and forecast demand for services, the council will not have sufficient financial resources to meet its statutory obligations by April 2018, even if we no longer continue to deliver any of the non-statutory services. The council will need to rely heavily on reserves in order to set a balanced budget for 2016/17 and 2017/18. As part of the budget cuts, the county council initially proposed to remove free transport to day services for disabled and older people, as it is not a statutory service for the county council to provide. However, at the full council meeting in February, this proposal was amended. It was initially proposed to waive any charges for the first six months, but now the proposal is that the service will be provided free of charge for eligible passengers for the foreseeable future. However, there will be some changes to the times that the service operates to take into account the cost of continuing this service free of charge. We are proposing that you will still get the same number of hours at your day service, but you will be picked up from home slightly later than you currently are and you will also be dropped off back at your home slightly later than now. We are proposing to pick you up from your home between 9.10am and 10.30am and return you to your home arriving at between 4.30pm and 5.45pm. The reason for this is because we currently have two fleets of buses, one for children and one for adults. However, we plan to use the same fleet of buses that will firstly transport children to school and then transport adults to day services. The service for adults will still operate over school holiday periods and the pickup and drop off times will not change (between 9.10am and 10.30am for pickup and between 4.30pm and 5.45pm for drop off). The service will be provided by Lancashire County Council (LCC) using our fleet of Travelcare buses, but where access is difficult for these buses we may use a private taxi firm. Where Travelcare can't undertake a journey for you, we may signpost you to Community Transport. If you have a passenger assistant on your journey now then this will continue. Day services for disabled and older people provided by LCC will open and close at a later time to accommodate those travelling on accessible transport in line with new journey times. For example, disability day services are currently open 8.30am to 4.45pm and in future they may be open from 8.30am to 5.15pm. If you do not attend a LCC day time support but use transport services to attend other daytime supports, your transport times will be affected. The operating times of these day time supports will not change and alternative arrangements may have to be made. Any individuals who have been assessed as meeting the eligibility criteria for accessible transport will have journeys to and from their day care placements provided. The council will regularly review the eligibility criteria to ensure that they are fit for purpose and will amend if required. Passengers who fund themselves will still be welcome to travel on the service. However, like with the current arrangements, commissioned passengers will take priority.
Subject	Other topic
Commissioned by	Public and Integrated Transport

Geographic area	All of Lancashire
Method	Questionnaire - online Questionnaire - postal
Consultation with	Service users
Date	30/04/2016 - 27/05/2016
Undertaken by	Business Intelligence

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Contact information

For more information about this research contact:

0300 123 6701
Email: haveyoursay@lancashire.gov.uk