Bus Service Improvement & Partnership Working - Briefing Session

In 2021 some of us participated in the survey that Dorset Council carried out prior to drafting the Bus Service Improvement Plan. Owen Clark, their Transport Planner has written to Planet Shaftesbury:

Thank you for your previous involvement in the development of the Council’s Bus Service Improvement Plan. With a significant amount of help from you and other stakeholders we were able to deliver our Bus Service Improvement Plan on time to the Department for Transport at the end of October. Since this time we have been working on the next stage – the Enhanced Partnership.

In order to deliver the Bus Service Improvement Plan, a formal Enhanced Partnership must be in place with all local bus service operators. We have established through engagement with local bus operators how we feel the governance of the partnership should work and how user representation can be achieved. A consultation draft of both the Enhanced Partnership Plan and Scheme have been produced – two documents required by the Department of Transport by the end of March 2022.

As part of the ongoing process we will soon begin consulting with stakeholders across Dorset so that we can understand their initial views and consider any comments before we formally ‘make’ the Enhanced Partnership. We would like to invite you to a stakeholder briefing session to be held via Teams.  You are invited to attend either of the following available sessions:

Wednesday 19th January at 10am

Thursday 20th January at 2pm

At this meeting we will give a brief presentation to explain the Enhanced Partnership process, our plans for governance and bus user representation, the work conducted to get us to this stage and the timeline for completing the process by the end of March 2022. Following the briefing for stakeholders a formal 28-day statutory consultation process will begin. At the briefing session we will explain this in more detail and outline how you can make any representations regarding the proposed Enhanced Partnership Plan and Scheme.

To attend either briefing session please email planetshaftesbury@gmail.com and the chosen invitation will be forwarded to you.