Cambridgeshire mayoral share of council tax frozen but concern raised at ‘failure to deliver all promised bus services’
The Mayoral share of the council tax bill in Cambridgeshire will be frozen in the next financial year.
This will mean people in a Band D household will continue to pay £36 a year to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.
However, concerns were raised that people in the area had been paying the tax to fund improved bus services, when some of the “promised” routes had “still not materialised”.
The Mayoral precept was introduced back in 2023 in response to the Combined Authority agreeing to fund several bus services across the county that had faced being cut altogether.
The tax was increased from £12 to £36 for a Band D household last year, with the Combined Authority setting out a number of “new and improved” bus routes to be funded by the precept.
However, the authority confirmed earlier this year that seven of those routes were not yet up and running and that the tendering process needed to start again.
Some of the Combined Authority board members raised concerns at a meeting this week (January 22) that some people were not seeing the benefits of the tax they were being charged.
Councillor Chris Boden (Conservative), leader of Fenland District Council, said he was asked by people in his area why the Mayor charged a precept when bus services had “substantially deteriorated”.
He said some services had been lost and other services that had been “promised” had “still not materialised”.
He said: “I would just like the Mayor to tell me what answer I should give why the Combined Authority is taking money from them and is failing to deliver.”
Councillor Anna Bailey (Conservative), leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, said she was pleased the Mayoral precept was proposed to be frozen.
However, she said: “It would have been nicer if it had been a reduction in recognition of the failure to deliver all of the services the precept was charged to residents to pay for.”
The Mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Dr Nik Johnson (Labour), said he disagreed that the bus services had “substantially deteriorated”.
He recognised there were problems, but said there had also been “substantial improvements”.
The Mayor highlighted that most of the network was run by private companies and said the “bus network needs reform”.
He said without the bus subsidies provided by the authority some places would have no services and others would have “much reduced services”.
He added that taking away the Mayoral precept would “take away all the bus routes that are in place.”
The Mayor said improving public transport was a “journey” and that there would be “positives and negatives along the way”.
He said: “Just bear with us for a bit, give us a chance, we are reversing 40 years of bus deregulation.”
Councillor Lucy Nethinsingha (Liberal Democrat), leader of Cambridgeshire County Council said she ‘regretted’ that the authority had to ask people to contribute to bus services in the area through council tax.
However, she said the things the Combined Authority was able to pay for, including the subsidised services, reduced bus fares, and the Tiger service, were “together making a difference”.
Councillor Anna Smith (Labour), representative from Cambridge City Council, said just because the authority was not able to “do it all immediately” did not mean it “should do nothing”.
She said: “We have to work on the goals that we have and I know we all share.”
Concerns were also shared at the meeting about the “unjustifiable” costs the Combined Authority was paying for some of the subsidised services.
Cllr Boden said some of the subsidised services were costing over £200 per passenger return journey.
He said the authority needed to “look carefully” at what subsidy it was providing per individual and to divert that money to “areas where there is significantly greater demand for bus services”.
Cllr Bailey said she recognised work had been undertaken to reduce the cost per passenger of some services, and that there had been successes.
However, she said: “Despite the best efforts there are certain [services] operating at unjustifiable levels.”
As part of highlighting the issue she proposed to reduce the bus subsidy by £313,000 in order to reduce the amount of money the Combined Authority asked the county council and Peterborough City Council for in the transport levy.
Other board members said they did not agree with everything Cllr Bailey and Cllr Boden had said, but the majority agreed to support reducing the amount taken from the county council and the city council.
Cllr Nethsingha said she had “reservations” about some of what had been said by Cllr Boden and Cllr Bailey, but said she welcomed any money that could go towards road maintenance.
She said the roads in Cambridgeshire were “shocking” after “over decade of reductions of government funding and decade of managed decline”.
Councillor Bridget Smith (Liberal Democrat), leader of South Cambridgeshire District Council, said the Combined Authority also needed to consider the value of the bus services other than just the financial cost.
She said rural services were not commercially viable, but were often important for the people using them.
Cllr Smith said: “We cannot take these decisions lightly because they affect real people’s lives.
“I think sometimes we risk taking decisions solely based on cost rather than value of what is being delivered.”
The budget approved by the majority of the Board also included retaining the £2 bus fare cap for a single journey until June, with the cap then increasing to £2.50 until December.
The Combined Authority agreed towards the end of last year to subsidise bus fares in Cambridgeshire to keep them capped at £2 until March 2025, after the government announced it would be increasing the cap to £3 for a single journey.
The authority originally estimated the initial three month subsidy would cost £1million, but this increased to £1.6million.
Cllr Bailey raised concerns about the costs the Combined Authority would face keeping the fares capped at a lower level.
She argued this money could be spent on providing “better services for everybody”, highlighting that some people did not have access to bus services.
Cllr Bailey said she believed subsidising the bus fare cap was “unsustainable”.
The Mayor said if the Combined Authority’s priority in the longer term was to reform the bus network, then he said the goal at the moment needed to be getting people out of cars and onto buses.
He said a “huge part of building a better bus system is getting people to use it” and said offering lower fares helped encourage people to do this.
