South Gloucester backs sub-regional deal

07 February 2008

South Gloucestershire council has backed plans for a joint transport delivery agent for the former Avon county area, being championed by Bristol City Council.

A meeting of the Conservative-controlled authority voted in favour of a motion by a Labour councillor that South Gloucestershire ‘urgently pursues sub-regional transport arrangements that are acceptable to all partners’.

Councillors and local environmentalists supportive of stronger, Avon-wide action on transport are now hopeful the four unitary authorities will strengthen the existing West of England Partnership.

The partnership had made ‘great progress but it’s urgent that we set up a mechanism for sub-regional delivery’, said Cllr Roger Hutchinson, the Labour South Gloucestershire councillor behind the motion, The West of England Partnership has overseen the production of a joint local transport plan, and co-ordinated a joint bid for a £42M Greater Bristol bus network.

Cllr Hutchinson said the Local Transport Bill, expected to become law within weeks, could allow the West of England Partnership to become a Transport for London-style ‘integrated transport authority’.

But he was ‘pragmatic’, and accepted that all four authorities were unlikely to agree this. Instead, he believed the four unitary authorities would instead be able to agree a joint mechanism for delivery, as well as strategy, allowing the body to, crucially, spend money.

A spokesman for Bristol City Council welcomed South Gloucestershire’s move. ‘The current partnership arrangements need to be strengthened. The regional spatial strategy panel report recommends that a transport authority is crucial to solving the region’s congestion problems.

‘For obvious economic and geographical reasons, management of the public transport network cannot stop at the city’s border.’ The authorities would now ‘discuss options’.

But Hutchinson believed the current West of England Partnership set-up, whereby all decisions needed to be agreed by all four councils, had to be retained to gain the support of a more sceptical North Somerset.

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