DalesBus, the volunteer-led Sunday bus network in the Yorkshire Dales, stands on a precipice. An increase in public sector support could pull it back to safety
DalesBus emerged as a response to the withdrawal of a cross-boundary tendered bus service by North Yorkshire County Council and the West Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive in 2007. Evening services were sacrificed, but DalesBus did rescue Sunday and bank holiday connections between Ilkley and Skipton.
Operated by the Dales and Bowland Community Interest Company (D&BCIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of charity Friends of the Dales, the organisation has over the past 16 years relied on the spirit of volunteerism – as no viable alternative existed – and a not-for-profit ethos. It has just passed the milestone of half a million passengers conveyed. But the pressing need for a funding solution remains as critical as ever, with organisers repeating calls on local authorities to recognise the importance of the service they provide.
Growth and adjustment
For the most part, the DalesBus network has grown since it took over from the withdrawal of tendered services in 2007. It now covers 13 active routes.
“The majority of the services were at one time contracted by either the National Park Authority or North Yorkshire Council,” explains Paul Chattwood, a Director at D&BCIC (pictured). “As they have wound down their support for buses, we’ve filled the gaps, so overall the (DalesBus) services have grown. We’ve had one route that was taken over commercially – which was a big success for us, getting a service to a commercial point and where an operator will take that on.
“We have of course picked up on some services that have unfortunately gone the other way – there has been an ongoing pattern of adjustment and fine-tuning over the years. Two services were lost earlier this year in part due to funding, and in part due to issues with rail connections.”
That loss was tempered by the recent addition of a new route in the Washburn Valley with support from Yorkshire Water, showing that there are still aspirations to expand the network. Paul reveals D&BCIC has a number of objectives for the future, one of which is to return to the Forest of Bowland – an area ironically unserved by D&BCIC, despite its name.
All services are operated by commercial operators and one community transport operator. On summer Sundays, 12 or 13 buses cover the work, with single shifts for drivers. A complete range of vehicles operate the network – from smaller Optare Solos to 45-seat single-deckers. Wherever possible, double-deckers are used to maximise capacity, with three utilised on Sundays and one on Saturday.
Partnerships support services
D&BCIC tries to find funding for the network wherever it can. That includes looking for partners that have synergy with the work the group is trying to achieve. Thankfully, having a volunteer-led organisation is a selling point to tell funders that all money received goes directly towards providing and marketing services.
“The Yorkshire Water funded route is an area that serves a number of its reservoirs, where it is quite keen to attract people to walks and promote the community value of the countryside around the reservoirs,” explains Paul. “Yorkshire Water has been a small supporter for a number of years, but we recently had a push on trying to get more from it within the context of plans to introduce car parking at some reservoirs. That was intended to come into force this summer – for various reasons, the car parking charges didn’t come in, but we did get the funding support for the bus service.”
Also key to the growth of the network has been listening to both existing and potential passengers. That has helped drive patronage, and following acquisition of the services from North Yorkshire Council or the National Park Authority, in the early years, costs to customers were halved through growth.
“We were probably a bit more focused on the tendering process for these routes than the council was, where it was just a small part of a bigger program,” Paul says. “There was more emphasis on getting good prices from the operators. The main thing was passenger growth through listening to what people wanted and marketing, making sure people were aware of what services were available – that’s an ongoing issue.
“Marketing and learning what people want as well enables us to grow the numbers on the existing services and add additional services.”
The most popular individual service is currently the Saturday provision between Skipton and Harrogate – a route that demonstrates the transience of some rural services, and why care must be taken in their management. A direct service existed under the Rural Bus Challenge scheme some 20 years ago, operated by Transdev Harrogate, with support from North Yorkshire County Council.
“They failed to make it work,” Paul says. “So it was a situation whereby it went from no provision, to large provision, back to no provision again. We have gone for a smaller scale, one-day a week, four return journeys on a Saturday, with a double-decker bus to maximise the number of travellers to get revenue as high as possible. It is challenged by the fact it is popular with concessionary pass holders and North Yorkshire’s concessionary reimbursement rate is notoriously low – but the only way to deal with that is to get as many people on the bus as possible. We average over 200 passenger journeys a day on that service now.”
Campaign for support
Despite the growth and its clear economic benefit and necessity, there remains an ongoing funding crisis that puts the DalesBus network in a fragile position.
In a statement published in March, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority acknowledges that reduction in funding from transport authorities has led to a delicate funding situation for volunteer-led organisations. Despite its interest in promoting public transport, the Park Authority says it “is not the body responsible for public transport, and has no statutory powers or resources to determine the level of provision”.
Despite this, Andrew Fagg, Media Officer at Yorkshire Dales National Park, highlights the Authority’s long relationship with DalesBus. Through that, it has provided an annual grant of around £5,000, which has been budgeted for the next three years. The Authority has also supported DalesBus through its Sustainable Development Fund – with grants in 2008, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2020, of £2,000, £18,000, £9,900, £4,600 and £950 respectively.
“From our perspective, the Authority has no powers or responsibilities when it comes to public transport,” says Andrew. “But increasingly, in light of the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the National Park, it is becoming a very important subject.”
While Paul says the statement issued in March shows “some enthusiasm”, it falls short of making the case as to why public transport is not being backed up more by Park money. The £5,000 budgeted through the grant falls far short of the £100,000 cost of running the network. “The Authority is now saying the right things, but the view is very much that it’s not its responsibility to deal with it,” he adds. “It’s also debatable whether this view is valid or not – if you look around the country, we see some national parks do support public transport under stipends.”
North Yorkshire County Council, meanwhile, undertook a process to reduce its public transport budget as part of an overall austerity programme; from 2011 to present it dropped from ÂŁ6.5m to ÂŁ1.5m, supplemented by short-term funding solutions post-COVID. Support for evening and Sunday buses, and what the local authority deemed to be leisure services, was cut as part of that reduction.
A local transport plan, currently under review, explicitly stated it would not provide for those services.
Nor have quantified objectives been set in terms of growing bus use or journeys by the Council or the Park Authority. This is despite both having signed up to the York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership’s (LEP’s) Routemap to Carbon Negative – produced by the LEP in response to the climate emergency, in which it identified a need for significant modal shift towards public transport.
Paul says D&BCIC is naturally “somewhat unimpressed” that neither the Park Authority nor the Council seem to be seriously tackling the challenge. “Both have signed up to this Routemap to Carbon Negative but there is not a huge amount of ambition in getting stuck in to drive forward what needs to be done.”
routeone has approached North Yorkshire Council for comment without success. It is aware that DalesBus receives nothing from the transport budget of North Yorkshire Council, only from locality budgets from individual councillors, which adds up to approximately ÂŁ10,000.
Funding challenge
Funding challenges therefore remain broadly similar to previous years. With the provision of more services and inflation in the cost base, what appears to be an “inconsistent” reimbursement of fares following the Bus Fare Cap Grant, and inadequate reimbursement of concessionary travel, D&BCIC believes public sector support is needed now more than ever to enable services to continue. The economic benefits, both socially and environmentally, have been demonstrated in recent statements.
The plan is to pursue the public sector further. That would include increasing the spend of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, to which DalesBus is connected through an Enhanced Partnership. There will also be more emphasis on commercial sponsorship and charitable trusts. Success would be when the former makes the backbone of the funding.
“We feel the public sector should be facilitating these benefits,” says Paul. “We are really grateful to the other businesses that have stepped in as well – but we would really prefer for that to be the icing on the cake.”