Timetables in bus stop - Church Road

I spoke some time ago to Phil Davies - our local councillor - about missing bus timetables in the bus shelter opposite the Co-op on Church Road. I had previously raised this at a Tranmere Together meeting. For a couple of months there had been no current timetable in the shelter and for quite a long time there was just a notice saying that there couldn't be an updated timetable because the bus times were changing so often. I took the veiw that this just wasn't good enough after talking to local residents who told me that they were all at sixes and sevens about when the buses were due.

To cut a long story short Phil chased up Merseytravel by writing to their Chief Executive -Neil Scales. The end result is that we now have an updated timetable in the shelter - so thanks to Phil for that.

Phil sent me a copy of the letter that he had received from Neil Scales which is a classic peice of civil service fudge which manages to face two ways at once - obviously a well-trained civil servant. Mr Scales also fails to apologise for the failure of his organisation to maintain current information at our bus stops - which I think is the least that he could have done.

He says in his letter to Phil that they have 'a commitment to maintaining current information' on bus service timetables at bus stops but that they 'don't have the resources' to keep the updated information "from the date of the change". This seems to mean that they have the commitment only for public relations purposes - they won't actually be delivering on that commitment. This is pretty poor stuff from a Chief Exec whose job it is to allocate resources to achieve their commitments.

Have a look for yourself - it is attached below.

Church Road HMRI Dec 07 meeting

Notes from Church Road feedback meeting 12th December 2007

These notes were taken by me (James Kay) and have been written up in note format. They will be replaced on this blog in due course by formal minutes from the meeting. There are some key points that you might want to note.

Progress report
As at 12th December the developers were still waiting for outline planning permission on the whole development. This hasd been submitted back in April 2007. They could not go ahead with a detailed application until this was given. The obstacle seems to be the legal team at the council who are holding this up. The end result of our discussions was that Phil Davies – our ward Councillor and a Wirral MBC Cabinet member, promised to chase this up and try to get all the key players in one room to resolve it quickly. Phil is clearly committed to resolving this as soon as possible but he is up against a local council bureaucracy whose track record on doing anything on time is abysmal. Don’t hold your breath.

IF Phil is successful in his attempts to speed up the bureaucrats (by no means a certainty) the best timetable from now on looks like this:

* Outline planning permission in place by mid January
* Detailed planning permission to be submitted – end February 08
* Detailed planning permission granted – June 08 (at the best – the outline permission has taken them 9 months already instead of the promised 3 months)
* Earliest start date therefore on Abakan site for commercial development is about 12 weeks later – that is Sep 08
* To finish Phase 1 (mainly the shops on the Abakan site) will take about 9 months from start of work to doors opening for business – May/June 09.

This is (in my opinion JK) the earliest likely completion date for phase 1. It is quite possible that we might not see this first phase completed until the end of 2009.

The next meeting will be February 13th at Royal Standard House at 2.00pm