Apologies for absence: H Morris (Essex County Council), D Kudla (Rochford District Council), M Hennessy (Castle Point Borough Council), S Gloyne (Southend BID), Insp. J Childs (Essex Police), J Martin (Bus Users UK), and M Bartram (Transport Focus)

The meeting was deemed to be Quorate as present were the Chair, over 50% of the City Council representatives, over 50% of the Bus Operator representatives, and one representative of the other member organisations.

The Minutes of the meeting on 4th September 2023 were confirmed as accurate.

The role of the Local Bus Forum within the Enhanced Partnership Plan and

Scheme was explained.

A number of questions had been submitted in advance by members of the public (including Councillors who were not members of the Local Bus Forum), according to the procedure detailed in the section of the democracy.southend.gov.uk website covering the Southend Local Bus Forum. These related largely to concerns regarding bus services in specific areas of the City, and were responded to by the Operators and / or representatives of the Council, as appropriate. The submitted questions were read out by the questioner where he / she was in attendance at the meeting, and by the Secretariat where the questioner was unable to be there in person. The questions and responses are posted as an Annex to these Minutes.

The approach behind the allocation of expenditure awarded to the Council was explained under the four main headings shown in the Agenda.

The discussion around the seven key objectives of the Bus Service Improvement Plan confirmed that these objectives continue to apply in the Enhanced Partnership. The refreshed BSIP (to be published on the Democracy website, alongside these Minutes) repeats these objectives and mentions identification and resolution of gaps in the network: these were discussed in the Forum. It was confirmed that the planned review of the network included as part of the BSIP provides evidence that the EP approach covers this.

The Recommendations on the Proposed Variations to the Enhanced Partnership Scheme were accepted with the following exceptions:

•  All the four proposed October 2024 deliverables be changed to December 2024, as it was considered that October 2024 was too optimistic.

•  The identification of options to promote value fares for the summer be advanced to May 2025 to allow adequate preparation before implementation of the value fares.

This and the previous item of these Minutes will become the Report submitted to the Local Bus Board as the Local Bus Forum’s guidance on the direction of the Enhanced Partnership.

The meeting noted that Jennie Martin MBE, Chair of Bus Users UK, the existing Chair of the Local Bus Board (who was unable to attend today’s meeting of the Forum) offered herself as candidate for election as Chair of the Southend Local Bus Board for the next 12 months. The Forum noted that the members of the Southend Local Bus Board supported her continuation as Chair of the Local Bus Board. No nominations for other candidates for Chair of the Board had been received by the Secretariat.

The proposal for Jennie Martin to be elected as Chair of the Local Bus Board for the next 12 months was formally made by Southend-on-Sea City Council, a vote took place and she was elected unanimously.

Southend-on-Sea City Council proposed that the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust be invited to join the Local Bus Forum as a Member for future meetings. This proposal was voted on and received unanimous approval.

It was also suggested by Southend-on-Sea City Council that the Southend Youth Council might be invited to comment on the Agenda items of future Forum meetings, although having the Youth Council as a Forum member is impractical because of the inability of a Youth Council’s representative to attend at the time of day that the Forum would normally meet. This suggestion was noted and it was agreed to be actioned.

This will be agreed at a later date but will be at some point in September

2025.