Community rail delivering social benefits
JOOLS TOWNSEND, chief executive of the Association of Community Rail Partnerships, tells STEVE BROADBENT about the challenges and opportunities facing the organisation, 25 years after the first CRP was formed
Today’s railway landscape in Britain is very different to when the godfather of community rail, Paul Salveson, formed the country’s first Community Rail Partnership (CRP) in September 1993.
Covering the Huddersfield-Penistone-Sheffield line, the Penistone Line Partnership (as the pioneer organisation was dubbed) has contributed greatly to the success of the route and the well-being of its communities over the past 25 years.
Salveson’s work on the Penistone line was emulated by others, including Neil Buxton on the Middlesbrough to Whitby ‘Esk Valley’ line. Before long, the number of CRPs led to the formation in 1997 of an umbrella organisation - the Association of Community Rail Partnerships (ACoRP). Salveson was general manager of ACoRP and chairman of the PLP until 2004, and until recently served on the ACoRP board.
Today, ACoRP boasts 60 CRP members, as well as more than 100 ‘Friends of Stations’ groups. Staff numbers have doubled in the past two years, as a new direction has been adopted to cater for the changing railway world. Passenger railway lines are no longer under threat, and lines that were struggling to survive in the 1990s now often struggle to meet demand. And at the heart of this revolution is ‘social inclusion’.
“A bit of a whirlwind, and certainly challenging,” is how ACoRP Chief Executive Jools Townsend describes her first 18 months in the job.
“Dramatic” changes had been made to the organisation at the end of 2016, with an urgent need to both better support the growing membership and cater for the Government’s very positive community rail agenda.
In effect, ACoRP has been relaunched, with a lot of work done to establish the new organisational strategy and processes, and to liaise closely with the membership “to understand their positions and the challenges they face”. Townsend and her 13-strong team “are very passionate people, clear about the benefits community rail can bring, and how it can be further supported and developed”.
One of the challenges faced by this reinvigorated body is that all 60 CRPs are different. There is no mould, no brand or common corporate identity - each does its own thing, doing what best suits its own community, with ACoRP on hand to give guidance when needed but not to dictate.
Spread right across Britain, the CRPs “are incredibly diverse”, according to Townsend. “They are focused on working in different local contexts based on different needs, and they have different set-ups and different priorities - all that is right and proper, since community rail must be rooted in the individual communities.”
Above all, CRPs need to be connected to their communities, understand their needs, and help them have a voice in the provision of railway services. The people involved with each CRP are also individuals - be they volunteers, paid CRP officers, or local government staff. Townsend stresses that ACoRP “is not about dictating, imposing or homogenising, but is very much about sharing and networking”.
A key aim of community rail has always been to encourage local people to use the railway, and to use it more - not only by broadcasting the service that it provides, but also by making the travelling environment more attractive.
“There is a particular focus on promoting rail
as an important part of sustainable, healthy and enjoyable travel,” says Townsend.
“But it’s no longer simply about ‘bums on seats’, as was perhaps traditionally the case. In today’s very different railway environment it’s also about ensuring the community gets the most from its railway and has a voice, and a stake, in its future. It’s also important that the rail industry understands local needs.”
With the Government investing more in the railway, and requiring more from community rail lines as well as from the major routes, there is an increasing role for ACoRP and its members to play. In this context, Townsend says that an important benefit community rail can offer is “helping the industry to really understand local needs, throwing a spotlight on issues and arguments that might otherwise not be understood, and making sure the railway meets the needs not only of existing passengers but of the wider community”.
The present situation is a positive one - there is a growing realisation among national and local government of the significant effect CRPs can have both on the railway and the community. Rail franchises are placing increasing focus on community rail, with contractual requirements to address the topic seriously, and ACoRP (always a very active and engaged body) has new momentum as well as increased funding and resources.
The biggest underlying change of the past few years has been the increasing recognition of the railway’s role in promoting social inclusion - a wide-ranging term that includes (as simple examples) using the railway as a sustainable means of transport for access to the countryside for recreation, and making the connectivity benefits of the railway more readily available to those with disabilities or lower incomes, or those from ethnic minorities who might not be fully aware of the potential of the railway network to offer benefits.
In November 2017, the Department for Transport launched a consultation on its proposed new community rail
This is not just about making the case to government for investment in the railways, but also making a case to the public about what a wonderful thing the railways are! Jools Townsend, Chief Executive, Association of Community Rail Partnerships
We want to connect our community rail network to other networks to our mutual advantage. Jools Townsend, Chief Executive, Association of Community Rail Partnerships
strategy. Townsend sees this move as “an acknowledgement of the potential for community rail to have an impact on social inclusion, diversity, community cohesion, sustainable end-to-end journeys, tourism and economic development” - a wide range of benefits never considered 25 years ago.
The strategy, due to be published this summer, will bring revived focus to the movement in England and Wales. Townsend believes it will be “a guiding light to the movement, and much more reflective of the range of work currently being undertaken within community rail and the aspiration of ACoRP’s membership to achieve even more. It will raise the profile of community rail still further.”
To meet the developing remit, ACoRP’s staff now includes several who come from the ‘third sector’ (community and voluntary bodies), with specialist knowledge in areas such as travel and tourism, and the media and marketing. ACoRP itself is a third sector body, albeit with close ties to government and the rail industry.
Not only are links with the membership and thence onwards to local communities around Britain being strengthened, so too are links to organisations such as the National Parks, Campaign for Better Transport, Sustrans, Transport Focus and the Community Transport Association.
CRPs need to reach out to organisations right across their local communities, particularly to address the important topic of broadening access to the railways.
Townsend explains: “We want to connect our community rail network to other networks to our mutual advantage. This is a priority for our members - ensuring people have not only the ability to use stations and board trains in a practical sense, but also the skills, awareness and confidence to use rail services.”
This gradual evolution of the Government’s social inclusion policies, and the increased funding now available to ACoRP and its members to help develop rail usage, is naturally welcome to all those who want to see enhanced services as well as increased patronage of local footpaths and amenities.
With the train operating companies also fully engaged in this positive spiral, there will be increasing scope for sound business cases to be developed for such improvements - after all, the Government would not be investing and focusing on community rail if it did not expect a return on its investment.
Equally, those who might be reluctant to use the train ( because of disability, vulnerability, lack of education, or even because they have been put off by scaremongering media) will gain considerably if they are empowered to use trains for access to cities, towns or the countryside.
The nature of individual CRPs has not changed greatly over the years. The majority are led by a single paid officer, managed and directed by a small board (often involving the local authority), and perhaps a handful of passionate volunteers. No two CRPs are the same.
“They have wide-ranging priorities and focuses, but broadly speaking we are all working for the same goal,” says Townsend.
But while the movement is predominantly funded by national government, and individual CRPs are generally managed by representatives of local government, it is still important that those working within the community rail movement remain entrepreneurial and free-spirited, always mindful of the overall policy but ever enthusiastic to promote innovation.
ACoRP offers induction training and ongoing support to newly appointed officers, to enable them to fully appreciate their roles. Townsend says that ACoRP also works closely with each CRP on topics such as planning and development, and the understanding of agreed outcomes. In some cases, a CRP may need advice on governance and the way it operates - there are many more rules and regulations surrounding the operation of such bodies than there were 25 years ago.
And while ACoRP’s 60 CRP members mainly cover rural lines, there is no reason at all why more urban lines should not join the
movement. It could be argued that there is just as much (if not more) need for disadvantaged people to use the railway in cities or for longdistance travel, and certainly Townsend is very keen to expand membership across Britain.
“The essential remit of community rail works everywhere and anywhere, and we certainly wouldn’t want to constrain community rail to solely rural areas. Community rail is a grassroots, communitydriven movement, so it’s quite natural it can spring up anywhere where there is a railway line or station,” she says.
An important part of ACoRP’s role is to encourage the formation of new groups. At any one time it is generally working with around ten embryonic partnerships, ensuring that any new body develops under the ACoRP umbrella to benefit from shared support and expertise.
Some 100 Friends of Stations groups are also members of ACoRP, and there is certainly the potential for many more new and existing groups to join the umbrella organisation.
These small bands of volunteers generally work to improve the look of their local station and to increase knowledge of its facilities, often being rewarded with some free rail travel. Increasing local awareness of rail travel is a voluntary activity that
The essential remit of community rail works everywhere and anywhere, and we certainly wouldn’t want to constrain community rail to solely rural areas. Jools Townsend, Chief Executive, Association of Community Rail Partnerships
could well expand greatly - especially when a new station opens, new trains are introduced, or timetables change. As with CRPs, membership of ACoRP would enable any Friends group to tap into a huge reservoir of expertise, and share best practice and ideas with the rest of the movement.
Although community rail has “changed and moved on considerably”, and support continues to grow within the rail industry, Townsend suggests that: “A quite narrow perception remains in some quarters as to what community rail is, and what it is for.”
That’s not to say that industry is lagging in its view of community rail - recent franchise agreements all place strong emphasis on the topic, with annual budgets and staff resources committed to helping ACoRP members’ lines thrive and prosper.
“We’ve come a long way in terms of the industry view of community rail, and the collaboration we experience,” says Townsend. “A collaborative approach is vital to CRPs and station friends.”
The DfT runs a Community Rail Working Group involving Network Rail and the train operators (under the umbrella of the Rail Delivery Group), into which ACoRP reports and advises. This group allows cross-industry discussion as to how community rail can be best supported, based on the current strategy.
Earlier this year, ACoRP published its 32-page report Community Rail & Social
Inclusion, in conjunction with the RDG, while it is also collaborating on the RSSB’s project to better understand the social value of the railways (see panel).
So, the coming years should indeed be positive ones for community rail, with communities understanding their local railway better, and gaining the benefits that brings for them, the environment, the industry and government.
Townsend suggests that might help to influence further rail investment, especially in the branches, and yet more growth in passenger numbers and revenue. It could be argued that pound for pound, money spent on CRP lines probably brings more revenue and wider economic and social benefit than would far greater sums spent on main lines.
Since the days of the first CRP, when lines could face closure if revenue did not exceed costs, the railways have come “a long way down the path of appreciating the social benefits”, Townsend concludes.
“But there is still a long way to go, and the railway delivers a lot of social impacts that are not being fully accounted for within the industry or government,” she adds.
“Community rail helps those benefits be understood and recognised. This is not just about making the case to government for investment in the railways, but also making a case to the public about what a wonderful thing the railways are! They contribute in so many important ways to the local economy, the environment and people’s lives.”