Hey all,

I’m writing this blog post to update you on how the night bus project is going so far, including any moves we’ve made and what the hold-up is!

So, what has happened so far?

At the moment, we’re waiting on finances to get the project going. The current proposal is a Monday to Saturday service from midnight to 0400, every hour on the hour. The bus would follow the 25-route going from the Norwich Train Station (for all the loft lovers) to UEA.

We’ve been proposed the following costings:

• £89,856pa for a full year, or
• £60,480pa for the academic year (based on 35 weeks)

So far, Norfolk County Council has agreed to fund 1/3 of the project, £20,000 or so. However, we’re not happy with the remaining £40,000 having to come from students to essentially pay for their own safe route home. So, I did two things:

• A motion to UEA Students’ Union Council

Within our own democratic structures something which any Union Council rep can do is bring a motion to Union Council creating something called policy. This policy essentially can dictate the SU to take action on something. With Nathan, I brought a motion with the following resolves:

1. Mandate the Activities and Opportunities Officer to work on the Night Bus project.
2. Make the Night Bus one of the Unions priority projects over the year and allow resources from staff and officers, specifically the Welfare, Community, and Diversity Officer to be put towards this project.
3. Continue engaging key stakeholders, namely students, members of the public, the university and bus companies to ensure the return of a night bus service.

This will allow the SU to make the Night Bus a priority project and to spend more time and staff resources on it.

You can read the motion here.

• A motion to Norwich City Council

Now, after we found out that the County Council was only going to fund a third of the project, the local Liberal Democrat party reached out offering their support to bring a motion to City Council. The motion had the following resolves:

1. Clearly state its support for the return of the UEA night bus.
2. Express its disappointment that the county council is as of yet unwilling to award the full funding this scheme needs and deserves.
3. Ask the Leader of the Council to write to the county council cabinet member for transport asking that the county council reconsider its prohibitively low funding offer to the UEA and FirstBus for the establishment of a year-long trial period of this service, across two consecutive academic semesters.
4. Ask the Leader of the Council and cabinet member for sustainable transport to work with partners, including the county council, FirstBus, UEA Students’ Union and the UEA in seeking funding arrangements for the long-term establishment of the service for such a time as the bus improvement fund remains unallocated to this project or runs out.

You can read the motion here.

What are the next steps?

So, following this, the next steps is for myself to continue working with the City Council to put pressure on the County Council to increase their funding. The most fun part of all of this is that the pot of funding the money would come from is £50 million! So, the £60,000 we are asking for is about 0.12% of that pot. Oh, and the pot is designed to specifically support things like bus services and late-night provisions. Fun amirite?

What’s the delay?

Hopefully that explains what some of the delay is - we’re essentially waiting for bureaucracy to take place. However, if we don’t think that it’s happening quick enough there are some actions we can take, for example petitions, contacting Parliament Ministers (such as the Minister for Transport) or other actions.

Either way, I promise we’re working on it, and we have made progress!

Your Activities & Opportunities Officer,

Luke