ESPOPF

The Daily Echo reported that we won a partial victory in that the Borough Council was forced to put £20,000 more into the Budget for Concessionary Travel. They decided to extend the Subsidised Hospital Travel service to include GP surgeries up to 3 miles beyond the EBC boundary and consultant clinics in the community – presumably to counter the criticism of the dial-a-ride service: that it does not include medical appointments.

The Subsidised Hospital Travel Service was our proposal, originally, in Hamble – born out of despair that we were going to get nothing. And, here we are again! The scheme will benefit only those who can afford half-price taxi fares and those with medical appointments. How does it help those most in need? No consultation, as usual.

So, no travel tokens, but we are not finished yet. We do not give up that easily. We have this quaint idea that we live in a democracy, where councillors are elected to serve the people. If they don't, they can expect consequences.

What have we achieved so far from the campaign?

1. We raised a Petition of just over 2,000 signatures calling for the restoration of the travel tokens and the support was tremendous.
2. With the support of the Echo,we achieved an excellent publicity campaign over many months, raising awareness of the issues.
3. We sent deputations to all the parish councils in the southern parishes and the local area committees and won support for the campaign from those who were not Liberal Democrats.
4. We achieved the wholehearted and unequivocal support of the Conservative, Labour and UKIP prospective parliamentary candidates in the Borough, who took up the campaign in their leaflets and stalls. Their borough councillors proposed amendments to the Budget to re-instate the travel tokens and we thank them for that.
5. In line with our aims, we provided a platform for our affected members to voice their concerns about the difficulties they would face without the tokens and we brought those concerns to the council and to the attention of the general public.
6. We managed to unite older people across the Borough by forming the Save Our Travel Tokens (SOTT) campaign, involving especially Chandlers Ford, Bishopstoke, Eastleigh and Fair Oak.
7. We recruited many new members and introduced many more to campaigning.
8. We raised ESPOPF's profile.
9. We mounted a very successful lobby of Borough councillors before the budget-making council meeting and ensured that Travel Tokens was the major issue in the debate on the Budget.
10. We exposed the ageist, uncaring, unresponsive, tendencies of Eastleigh Borough Council, so clearly evident and shocking at the council meeting.

Our programme for the future includes:

• pursuing our complaint to the Ombudsman that the Borough Council did not follow the correct procedures in making the decision to axe the travel tokens
• investigating the Equalities Bill/Act for breaches by the Borough Council
• reporting the Leader of the Council to the Standards Board for using his right of reply in the Budget debate to accuse ESPOPF's Hon. Secretary of being dishonest!!
• continuing to campaign for the frail elderly and disabled.

Report of meeting with Chris Huhne MP on 8th May 2009

ESPOPF arranged a meeting with Chris Huhne MP on Friday 8 May for representatives of people who were to lose out when travel tokens were stopped. Those present, including Patience Sambrook and Diane Andrewes (ESPOPF Officers), were:

1 Maurice McCreery, a blind member of Netley Blind Club, which covers the Hamble Peninsula. He spoke about how the travel tokens subsidised his own travel expenditure in taxis on necessary and frequent local visits to the vet. with his guide dog. He said that the Guide Dog Association paid for visits to Winchester. He spoke of his wife's need to use taxis for shopping in order to get it home. (She might be able to use the Bursledon Shopping Bus with the free bus pass if this is to be one of the new schemes envisaged by David Airey, but not yet confirmed). He also spoke about the needs for financial help of the members of Netley Blind Club, who travel by One Community Mini bus to their meetings and have been able to use travel tokens in the past to pay the fare.

2 Mrs Margaret Bevis, an older ESPOPF member with mobility problems, spoke of the need for some Bursledon Lunch Club members, which includes members from Bursledon, Hamble and Netley, to have their weekly travel in a One Community Mini bus subsidised, as they used their tokens for this previously. Twelve of them pay £5 per month for travel, in addition to paying for lunch and club administration; the rest are able to find their own way to Lowford. The Club receives grants for speakers and other entertainment. Margaret also spoke about the Bursledon Shopping Bus which carries about 40 older people to Tesco on Fridays. They use their travel tokens to pay for their fares. She also mentioned the Bursledon Good Neighbours Scheme, which receives travel tokens in lieu of donations towards mileage costs from passengers.

3 Heather Foster spoke for Abbey House Nursing Home residents in Netley Abbey, most of whom are wheelchair-bound. She said there were many misconceptions about nursing home patients and people did not understand their need to get out into the community, to visit their families, to go to the theatre or concerts - in fact to do all the activities enjoyed by others. Their families had often made sacrifices to meet the nursing home costs and were not able to meet their leisure needs. The problem was transport and the cost and convenience of it. Dial-a-ride and the Hospital Taxi service did not meet their needs as they had to be booked in advance and patients were often left at the place they had been taken to without transport to get home. Visiting cemeteries and the Southampton Crematorium posed insuperable problems as visits to them were not possible on any of the other concessionary travel schemes.

4 Mrs Joan Plant, a carer from West End, spoke for her disabled daughter of 24, who was unable to use Dial-a-ride because her wheelchair was too large to be accommodated in the Dial-a-ride minibuses. Obviously, she was unable to travel on public transport. Mrs Plant made the point that EBC was discriminating against all disabled people in the Borough by issuing free bus passes to able -bodied people and ceasing to give any subsidy to disabled people and that this discrimination was continued in other areas such as ending the free car parking for disabled people at the Swan Centre. She said the Council was not complying with the Disability Discrimination Act, which required the Borough Council not to treat disabled people less favourably than able-bodied people and even to give them preferential treatment.

Chris. Huhne reiterated his desire to represent individual cases to the Borough Council of people who had been disadvantaged by the removal of travel tokens. He thought it might be possible to target tokens at particular groups, such as the registered disabled. It was pointed out that not all disabled people or those with mobility problems were registered, so they would miss out if they had to be registered in order to qualify for tokens, and what about people who were unable to access buses because they were too far away? They might not be registered disabled.

It appeared that many different groups of people had relied on the subsidy provided by travel tokens for a wide variety of uses: to join with others in shopping, attending medical appointments, socialising, undertaking necessary journeys. The travel tokens were flexible and offered choice; they often made the difference to people's quality of life and wellbeing. It seemed to those present that they were the easiest to use and most popular travel concession for all those different groups of people and individuals who could not use buses and they wanted them restored. It was obvious that the free bus pas was too good an offer for most people to refuse and that the people who wanted travel tokens needed them desperately.

Chris Huhne has since written to EBC to ask that disabled people should be allowed a restricted issue of travel tokens. So far, there has been no reply.

COMPLAINT TO EBC
ESPOPF has complained that the issue of the recent leaflet "Travelling in Eastleigh Borough - A Guide for Older Residents" accompanied by a letter from Cllr Airey infringes the Recommended Code of Practice for Local Authority Publicity.
The Code states that councils should refrain from publishing information on controversial issues which could be perceived as influencing public opinion or promoting the image of a particular candidate or group of candidates immediately prior to an election.
The letter, though purporting to be a response to signatories to the Petition to restore travel tokens, did not mention travel tokens and, in our view, was a blatant attempt to persuade 2000 voters that the ruling party was doing so much for older people in the way of concessionary services that they need no longer be concerned about the frail elderly and disabled residents who had depended on the travel tokens.
It is worth noting that it took the council 3 months to the day since the Petition was presented at a council meeting on February 23 to make this response on May 23. The leader of the council, who was the principal player in the decision to axe the tokens, was standing for election as a county councillor candidate, as were other Liberal Democrats on June 4.
EBC's response has been to say that the Code has not been breached. The ESPOPF Committee will consider at its next meeting whether to continue its complaint and would welcome views from members.

The Ombudsman's Report has now been received.