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Planner1

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Everything posted by Planner1

  1. A factual one. No one is forcing you to live in a place you find so bad, are they? So if you dislike it so much, consider your alternatives would be my advice. The grass isn’t always greener though.
  2. Everywhere I’ve seen they have similar setups for liaison / partnership with the operators. Some of it is down to history and personalities. One place I worked had two dominant bus operators in the city. I found one was dynamic, helpful, open to the opportunities offered by change. The other was suspicious, resistant to change and unhelpful. I’d say some of that was probably down to the people in charge and their previous experiences. I’ve also found some of the bus operations side staff at CA/PTE’s to be a bit “old school” and not the easiest to deal with. I’ve also seen differences in how staff at councils deal with operators, some good some not. Compared to others I’ve seen, when I was involved, Sheffield were pretty good at involving the operators right from the start of significant projects ( like public transport corridor schemes) and trying to get their input and buy in. I’ve seen recent examples in a big city elsewhere that were not good, where council staff appeared not to be taking operators views and issues seriously in our opinion. We acted to ensure they did and the operators needs were eventually addressed. It shouldn’t need to be like that and doesn’t engender trust.
  3. What makes you think that they are more effective. It’s just a different administrative setup.
  4. We had a South Yorkshire County Council ( I worked for them) until 1986 when the tories abolished it. The county was the highway authority and as I recall were responsible for education too I think.
  5. Yeah, the PTE’s are / were in Metropolitan areas ie the ones with the big cities. Other places had / have a different split of responsibilities. The county council is usually the highway authority and in many ways does what the MCA does here, leads on bids, administers the funding etc. In North Yorkshire some of their transport bids / funding came through the West Yorkshire CA, so for that they had effectively 3 layers of administration, District, County and CA. That’s how the government wanted it.
  6. Go live somewhere you think is better then. Wherever you are, whoever you ask, they invariably think they live in the worst place and their council is terrible.
  7. Different administrative setups. They have county councils and districts. North Yorkshire was similar but are now setting up an MCA.
  8. Have a look at their website and educate yourself. See this page Just looking at projects doesn’t tell you the whole story though. Pretty much all the government funding for transport projects and initiatives that local councils deliver comes through CA’s. Many of the government funding streams are competitive and the CA co-ordinates and produces the bids. Once government funding is obtained, the CA has to have an assurance process in place that all the funded projects report through to evidence that they are developing and delivering the projects and initiatives in the way that the CA and the government expect. The CA are the fund holders and have to deal with and process the claims for payment by the delivery partners ( often the local councils but can be others) They also deal with enterprise funding ( via the LEP) and police and crime ( via a commissioner) They also produce and co-ordinate development of policies and strategies at regional level. These are important as they are part of the justification for funding bids. They usually do other functions too like commissioning transport / economic models which are used in policy and project development.
  9. They scrapped the elected council mayor in May 2023 and now have a leader and cabinet system. Elected local mayor was one of several choices of governance system available to a council.
  10. They were working as a city region partnership long before the mayor came along. The government wanted it that way and started to award transport related funding on a city region basis, so the local councils had to work together. Here they became an MCA to get additional devolved funding. Others like Leeds city region didn’t really want a mayor but eventually had to get one in order to get the government money. As far as I’m aware the North East is the only one that doesn’t have an elected mayor
  11. Explaining how government funding works isn’t “fervent defence”, it is explaining the facts. Many people on here are critical of the council without knowing the facts. I like to give people the fullest picture I can, so they can come to a better informed opinion. I have worked for the council in two stints. Last one ended over 5 years ago. I have always been open with people when I was working at the council. I also posted on here as a Sheffield council representative with the full knowledge and consent of my managers and the moderators. I still work in local government, but not here. I have no desire to “dish the dirt” on my former employers, not that I have much dirt to dish. The fact that you are posting on social media doesn’t make you immune from the laws of the land. You can get fired for saying anything critical of your employer. SCC are not my employers and I am happy to criticise them if I feel it’s merited.
  12. If I recall it correctly, the emergency measures funding was rolled up into the subsequently announced active travel funding. The government do that quite often to make the funding pot they are announcing sound bigger. There’s often a lot of smoke and mirrors in government funding announcements and you have to look closely to see what is actually new.
  13. Councils everywhere are trying to make their town/city centres more pedestrian and cycle friendly and less car dominated. They are following central government policy and the government are funding it. Councils and the government will never meet their carbon reduction targets unless they get a lot more people out of their cars. The universities bring in a lot of money and people so it’s pretty obvious that the council would be interested in their needs and views. How have they lied?
  14. I said “most people” to account for the minority who might find the longer distance an issue. When you make changes, generally someone loses out. You can never please everyone. Yes, you’ve mentioned the temporary locations plenty of times. Do you, or anyone else on here know why the stops haven’t been moved to the permanent locations yet? Or even where the permanent locations are?
  15. You heard that one about omelettes and eggs? Most people will have choices about which stops they use. If you don’t like those, pick another.
  16. The government gave the money for temporary / trial measures, but then later gave more money for permanent schemes, so nothing wrong that I can see in making a trial scheme permanent if it works. Putting things in on a trial/temporary basis is a good way of evaluating its impacts. Lets you see if there are any unexpected issues. Traffic regulation orders have to be advertised and put in place, both for the temporary stuff and for the permanent works, so there has been ample scope for people to object. Also nothing wrong in having long term plans / ambitions and utilising funding streams as and when they come up to deliver them. Many schemes are done that way.
  17. Quite how you can construe that a quote out of a discussion about police enforcement of pavement parking relates to the NHS is beyond me. I see others share the same view.
  18. If you seriously think they are there to enforce every single law, statute etc to the max, I fear you will be constantly disappointed. They don’t get enough resources to do that, so they have to prioritise, like most underfunded public services. Go ask them to enforce on the pavement parking around NGH and do let us know how you get on. ( they do actually visit when complaints are received of pavements being obstructed, in my experience they usually send pcso’s). Yeah they do have that too.
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