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The Public Sector Executive Podcast is the new podcast bringing you closer to the public sector leaders in the UK. Covering everything from the environment to the economy to transport, our podcast will bring you the latest news, views and insight from the people responsible for shaping the country's future.
Today I am joined by Andrew Summers, chief executive of Transport east, and we're going to be talking about the annual report for 20, 22, 23 from Transport east. Some of the successes, some of the challenges faced and where transport east goes from here. So Andrew, welcome to the podcast. I think the first thing I would like to touch on is good things from the annual report. Everyone likes to talk about successes. What have the main successes been in the last year for Transport east?
And. Hi Dan, and great to be here, really. Ah, welcome the opportunity to talk with you today. I think in answering that question, it's firstly key to identify what our role was and is, to then identify the successes. So I mean, just to be clear to listeners, our role really is to set the transport strategy for the region. We then use that to advise the secretary of state on our investment priorities and then we provide capacity and capability for our range of partners to accelerate those priorities and really deliver on the strategy. And it's worth recognizing that we are made up of our 29 local authority partners and government. So last year was a really good step forward in delivering against all of those. So just picking out some of the highlights from the annual report. I think firstly, the transport strategy, that we and our partners had spent a number of years developing through hard work, difficult conversations, and a strong evidence base was endorsed and accepted by the secretary of state. And that means our strategy, should now be considered when government makes regional transport decisions going forward. So a really big step forward for the region. We haven't had this before in the east, and then over the year, a number of other really notable, successes. So particularly leading the way in topics such as rural mobility. So we launched our rural mobility center of excellence, where we did a lot of work around building the evidence base, understanding the needs of people and businesses within the east, and then starting to develop a really strong evidence base, a, set of policies, some tools for our partners to start using to really make life better for those people and businesses, in our rural areas. Also, we provided a lot of strategic advice to government throughout the year based on evidence. So, for example, one of the key parts of that was the work we did on Ely and Hawley Junction, for those of you not familiar with what that is, Ely Junction is a bottleneck in the strategic rail network across the whole of England. It is ultimately blocking a lot of the freight that we want to move from the ports in the east to places, such as the Midlands, the North and Scotland, and unlocking that would really allow us to achieve some of our strategic objectives. So we worked hard with our partners to develop the strategic case for that, and indeed with the government as well, to help them progress that scheme forwards. I think also in terms of our capacity and capability function, we made a lot of headway. Some really groundbreaking work, for example on electric vehicles. Our EV ready work, provided analytics and data for our local authorities to restart to plan the next generation of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. We really move forward with our regional model called Bertie, which is a new people movement model for the east that really allows start to think how people will travel in both current years and up to 2040, 2050, to really understand how we need to shape the way the people movement is going to pan out over that. We've really sought to understand the people in the east as well. So we launched a travel behaviour survey to really get under the skin of what makes people travel, what causes them to travel in certain modes, what the barriers are to travel as well. And this is really important because we haven't really had this insight of that level of detail in the east before, but it's fundamental to understand how people travel to help cater for them in the future. So hopefully, Dan, what we can see is a range of things that we've achieved over the course of the year based on what our core functions are.
Completely agree there, that there is some real wins in there and everything from just understanding what people want from their transport in the east to making changes that can really drive the economy as well. With that in mind, all these successes, how do they support wider priorities for local government and government of all levels across the country? Because there are some very similar goals, things like housing, decarbonization, economic growth. How do your successes influence those?
Really important question and as you're referring to, transport is ultimately one of a number of enablers that support economic growth, a, better environment and better outcomes for society. And indeed, part of our transport strategy was to try to articulate using your words, what those priorities were for our in able to then determine how we went about our work. And we identified four priorities, that our work is geared towards and these are enshrined in our strategy. So firstly, decarbonisation to net zero. Secondly, connecting our growing towns and cities, thirdly, energizing our rural and coastal communities and fourthly, unlocking international gateways. And our view was if we can achieve those, then that represents transport's contribution to those wider social, economic, environmental outcomes. So just to sort of answer your question, in a bit more detail, how did our achievements help to achieve those? I, guess, firstly, taking decarbonisation. So this is a real challenge for transport in the east. You know, 42% of all emissions in the east come from transport. That's very high and indeed higher than most other regions in the UK, particularly because we have a large amount of freight, and also we have a lot of rural trips that have no other alternative apart from the private car. So, for example, the work we did on Ely and Hawley, that was primarily, focused not only at trade, but also reducing carbon emissions. So if that scheme went ahead, you would take nearly 100,000 hgvs a year off the road network, which have significant carbon savings as well. So you can start to see how our, objectives and our work directly relates to trying to achieve those priorities. I guess, going through, those priorities in more detail. Our second priority around connecting growing towns and cities. We have 75 towns and cities across the east. We need to connect between them, given we have a very polycentric settlement pattern, not dominated by one large urban area, but the economy works by better connectivity between those and recognizing that we connect to the rest of the UK as well. So, London, Cambridge Midlands and the north. So two of the key things we did last year was our strategic roads advice to government, which set out a, clear evidence base for where investment should most take place on our strategic roads. So both the National Highways Network, which is the, strategic road network, and the local authority road network, which is the major road network, and government use our advice to then prioritize investment. We also did that for rail. so we did a significant amount of work on establishing the evidence base for rail, better connectivity, and subsequently working with our partners to make the case for where those connections need to be in the future. I think rural is also a key thing. so as I mentioned earlier, we've set out our, rural centre of excellence. One of the key things we did last year on this was to develop a commission. So ultimately what we did, we worked with a key range of partners and businesses across the region, developed an evidence base, developed a clear set of recommendations to government that went to parliament and held an event, where we had the minister, in, and explained to him the reasons we need more investment in rural transport in the east and how we can start to deliver those at a governmental, regional and local level. So really bringing together the region's voice and taking it to parliament, and to ministers directly. And I think on our final strategic priority international gateways. We've done a huge amount of work with our, ports and airports. Now the east has 13 ports and three international airports. Largely considers one of the gateway regions to the UK. So a lot of our work has been to work directly with them to understand their issues and priorities and see how firstly, surface transport from those ports and airports can be delivered to connect them to other areas of economic activity and second, work with them to address some of their issues, such as how do we transition to alternative fuels. I think lastly, all of that wrapped, up with the tools, capacity and capability we've provided. so we are developing our centre of excellence and this is really aimed at, avoiding each local authority to have to do the same thing. for example, we have 29 partners. So imagine 29 organizations doing one thing. We save this happening 29 times, just do it once at a regional level, provide significant economies of scale, savings and ultimately better benefits. So hopefully answers your question of we've got a set of priorities and the stuff that we do genuinely contributes to achieving those priorities.
You mentioned about the east being a very rural region. One thing we've seen in transport in the last year, two years, especially around things like HS two and these major transport projects, whether it be highways or rail, it's all about connecting major cities, whether that's Birmingham to Manchester, Manchester to Liverpool, Manchester to Leeds, all of these massive urban centres. Why is it important though to not forget about those smaller towns, those villages and keep those rural communities connected to each other?
It's a really important point and particularly important for the east of England because one in three people in the east live in a rural community, and for us that's about 1.2 million people. So that's a significant amount of our population, and we've done a lot of analysis about their accessibility and it's pretty concerning. two thirds of those live in what we class as a transport desert. That is, they have no access to education, training, skills, work by any means apart from the private car. and we and other subnational transport bodies have explored this a bit further. This creates significant transport related social exclusion. it doesn't allow them to participate in the economy, nor does it allow them to access those services they need. And it's worth noting here that, one of the new government's five missions, for example, is to improve the NHS and part of that is to improve access to the NHS and health services. So that's why rural accessibility and, connectivity for those communities is incredibly important. And subsequently, when we set out our advice to ministers on rural connectivity, we set out clear things that need to be done at a national, regional and local level. Indeed, one of the things at national level that we were talking about was a need for appraisal of transport schemes and transport investments to take greater account of social benefits so that those people living in rural areas have, greater weighting applied to their needs. likewise, at a regional and local level, there are initiatives that need to be undertaken to provide both better, local transport, be that buses, but also non transport interventions as well. So allowing communities to be able to deliver more services locally to reduce the need to travel where possible. So there really is a need for this increased and enhanced focus on people that live in rural areas, particularly in regions like ours. I will go back to your sort of question, though, to say that urban areas are absolutely vital as well. as I said, we have 75 towns and cities, within the east. And indeed, as I said earlier, that polycentric settlement pattern, means our economy relies on good urban connectivity within those places and between them, and so a number of the work streams that we are doing serve both rural and urban areas and take into account how they can work together, because the interaction between rural and urban is really important. a lot of the congestion in urban areas does indeed come from rural areas who have no alternative to the private car. So, for example, on things such as strategic rail, we've done quite a lot of analysis of our future network needs. We've identified a range of short term opportunities for early delivery where enhanced frequency in both urban and rural areas can really help to support people's needs. And we've seen examples of this recently. For example, in greater Anglia, doubled frequency on the east Suffolk line between Ipswich and Lowestoft. That, had a corresponding increasing mode shift to rail amongst those urban areas. Up and down, rural areas, up and down that line of about 100%. So doubling frequency of passenger transport in rural areas really does make a difference. So, going back to your premise of your question, it is incredibly important. A third of our people live in rural areas and it's making sure that we're addressing their needs as well as simultaneously thinking about how we support urban areas and the connectivity between them.
So we open by talking about the successes that you guys have had in the last year. And, we love to talk about successes. Everyone loves to talk about all the good things that they've done. But it's also just as important to kind of think about those challenges that have been faced, whether they've been overcome just yet or not, because obviously it's those challenges that really drive further progression and improvement. With that in mind, in the last year, what kind of challenges have you guys, as an organization found, had to overcome or are looking to overcome?
And I guess in answering this question, it's worth reflecting on our position as an intersection between national government, local, government, and with a range of regional and national partners. So we're kind of in the middle of a very complex, ecosystem, and within that there's a number of challenges that we've experienced over the last year. firstly, financial challenges are incredibly stark at the minute. we saw the chancellor's fixing the foundation's report, published earlier this month, an audit of current government expenditure which identified a 21.9 billion budget pressure, that government are currently facing over this next financial year and the need to review public expenditure. Now, within transport, there are a number of high profile, transport projects across the UK which are increasing in costs. So a large part of the role of a sub natural transport body is to provide advice to government on the priorities within our region, to help government make some of those really difficult decisions about what to proceed with. So from our perspective, the challenges around making the case for some of that investment is increasingly becoming more important and how some of those projects can be delivered in more efficient ways where there may be cost savings, where there may be ways of doing them better. So there really is a large part here around the financial challenge, that subnational transport bodies can really help governments to tackle. The second area I'll come on to is uncertainty, I guess, political uncertainty, which has been particularly prevalent over the last twelve months and indeed, you know, the last, four or five months as well as we transition from one government to another, I guess it's natural that in any period such as that, it's very difficult, for a government to really set long term clarity on policy, and as a result in places such as the east, we haven't necessarily had that long term view from a national perspective of what those priorities would be, and so therefore we've had to have a degree of flexibility in how we develop our ah, strategy and planning, to be able to cater for whatever the new policy direction might be. I'm really hoping, however, it seems that now we have a new government in place, we have clarity on what the five missions are. We have clarity now from the secretary of state on what the five priorities for transport are. It gives us that clarity on direction, that we as a body can now take forward, with government over the next year or so to really set a direction for the east, including advising on the comprehensive spending review, and the range of reviews that, ah, are taking place at a government level on strategy. There really is an opportunity now to help, to crystallise that there's a third area as well, in terms of challenges around overcoming siloed structures as well. So obviously, transport has often been delivered, in a relatively siloed way, across England and the UK, and we really think there's an opportunity here to join up those plans and decision making at place, with a view to integrated decision making. So ultimately, the people in the east, customers, businesses that work here, they want to be able to plan seamless end to end journeys, that may well start at their home where they walk, or take some public transport, then use another form of public transport, or may use a car or park and ride. But ultimately helping people to make seamless journeys and that requires more joined up decision making on the components of that journey. And I think there's quite a lot we can do to help join up, I guess a lot of the siloed, decision making structures within the UK around transport by integrating decision making more at a regional and local level, where a real multimodal approach is taken to help those partners at a national level deliver the best benefits from their schemes. So, in summary, financial challenges, the political uncertainty, which hopefully we're now navigating our way out of and then trying to overcome silo structures are three challenges that we as an organization have faced over the last year.
Just as much as it's important to recognize challenges that are being faced, we also don't like to just sit here and moan. Challenges like this are a learning opportunity, an opportunity for real growth and real development. How do you intend to overcome, those challenges in a little bit more depth? And how do you really intend to use those as a platform to then build from, so that the 2024 25 annual report is even more glowing?
I'll just pick up an example for each of those challenges I raised to illustrate. So, firstly, in terms of the financial challenges, one of our core functions is to help advise the government on prioritisation. And indeed, when faced with significant budget pressures, there will be a need to prioritise. So what we are really now doing, and will do so up, ah, to the comprehensive spending review and beyond, is provide with the evidence base that we've got the single voice that we have across our range of partners really clear advice on what those investment priorities could be for the east related to the strategic priorities. So we've put in place what our strategic priorities are. We know what our pipeline of investment needs to be and now I think we can be really clear and helpful to government in advising therefore what the best priorities should be for that limited pot that they will have. And secondly how we can join up partners to deliver things more efficiently, with greater value for money and make savings where we can. So an example of that for example is where we have developed a wider southeast freight partnership with our two neighbouring sub national transport bodies, transport for southeast England economic heartland, where we brought together all of the sub national transport bodies, a private sector in terms of freight operators, freight organizations, government, local authorities in one place to set a clear direction for strategic freight, identify what those priorities are and identify where synergies are where collectively across strategic area we can be more effective. And there's one example of many things we're doing to help government to reduce the inefficiency, and inertia that sits within the current system. I guess in terms of uncertainty we're doing a significant amount of work in terms of clarifying where the future next generation investment should lie in line with those new government policies. So as I said earlier, we're developing an update in our strategic investment program based on the latest evidence that we've developed around rail, around road, around electric vehicles, ah around a range of other topics to ensure that we're bringing that together in an integrated way, to set out the best pipeline will be for the east going forward. And I think thirdly in terms of overcoming those silo structures, I think that's where our partnership approach really comes to the fore. and I think also us helping our partners with devolution as we go forwards here. So obviously the new government have set a really strong devolution agenda and we as a sub national transport body have a clear role to play in that as a devolution partner. Recognising that it's better when decisions get made at ah place in terms of genuinely ensuring integration and making sure that the outcomes and funding is all directly towards the same thing. So we are doing a lot of work with our local authorities to genuinely be a better devolution partner going forward. So hopefully there's clear ways forward that we can help to overcome those challenges.
we've described and with those clear directions forward. I think a really, really good message to close on is looking ahead to the next annual report, looking ahead to the next year of work. What are the aims for the future? What will the next year's worth of work look like for transportees?
So as you can imagine, we're already underway with a significant work program this year to help our partners with, the functions that we've already talked about. So just picking up some of the things that you can expect to see coming out over the next few months and featuring in our annual report next year, we've moved ahead significantly on our capacity and capability for partners. So our technical team have developed a digital platform called Fuse which puts all of our tools and evidence in one place for our local authority partners to now use directly, for their own business cases, local transport plans and other things that they need to do. Our EV ready tool that I described earlier is due for an update. So we will provide the latest situation in terms of where electric vehicle infrastructure is in the east and subsequently how our partners can then plan the next generation that we are already working with government to help accelerate delivery of our priorities. So we are in the middle of developing our updated strategic investment plan and developing the case for some of the schemes within that. For example, rail investment delivery. we are shortly to publish a report on what exactly those short term wins might be. and they are things such as improved frequency, between Ipswich and Peterborough, Ipswich and Cambridge, improved frequency between Clacton and Colchester, for example. So things that could be done relatively quickly within the constraints of the existing infrastructure, supplemented by the case for investment of some of those longer term things that we talked about. Continuing to make the case for Ely and Hawley, as well as a range of other things, particularly on east west, and north south, routes. we're also thinking about the next generation of schemes as well. So over the course of the year we'll finalise our connectivity studies. These identify where the gaps in connectivity in the east will arise between now and 2040 and subsequently allow us to work with our partners to develop the next generation of investment. and you can anticipate in the comprehensive spending review we put forward some proposals whereby we want to secure, development funding for some of those to then bring them to fruition, bring them to a, business case for future funding. One of the areas where the east has traditionally struggled is to not have that oven ready pool of business cases ready to go. And I think what we can do now with the new government is understand what their new priorities are and develop the best possible package of measures to, take forward with them. So, hopefully, Dan, a really exciting year ahead of things that we can do.
Thank you for joining me today.
Thank you very much. and I encourage any listeners to get in contact with us if they want to know more. Thanks a lot.