Medway trains to get contactless ticketing system
Medway trains to get contactless ticketing system
Plus the buses stay at £2, NHS workers don't get an NHS pay rise, and the Conservatives have a new leader.
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Get ready to tap onto the train
We all love a bit of public transport news, particularly when it’s good. Today, we have the news that Medway is set to be included in a new South East region Pay As You Go rail network.
There’s a lot to unpack here about what exactly that means and what difference it’ll make for passengers, but briefly: A London Oyster/contactless like system is coming for all of us.
By all of us, that’s all stations from Rainham westwards. So our friends over in Sittingbourne are out of luck.
But every Medway station is set to be included in the scheme, based on plans first created in 2019, which the government recently confirmed they were moving forwards with.
Transport for London (TfL) will create and manage the system following the success of their own Oyster/contactless system across the inner London area. An initial tranche of 52 stations is set to join the system by the end of this year, while the remaining 181 stations (including Medway) are scheduled to be operational by March 2025.
Unfortunately, the scheme may not do much to reduce the expensive ticket prices that exist between Medway and the capital. While it is “still to be resolved” whether a wider zonal ticketing system will be rolled out, the initial focus seems to be more on convenience, with passengers having the ability to tap in and out at stations rather than queuing up to buy paper tickets to travel. The system would allow passengers to benefit from daily and weekly capping, which is useful for those who travel on an ad hoc basis without the ability to commit to a weekly travelcard.
While this is undoubtedly progress and a step in the right direction in terms of making train journeys simpler, the key question will be whether or not the new system will lead to lower fares for passengers on our very expensive bit of railway.
Buses are to stay at £2 for now
We go on about bus services a lot here on Local Authority. Buses are crucial public transport, particularly in places like Medway where they are essential for people getting around. Buses are also the form of transport most likely to be used by those with the least means, so keeping services reliable and affordable is essential.
Since January, the government has been running a scheme that caps bus fares at £2 for bus operators that choose to take part. In Medway, that means Arriva and Chalkwell services, and you’re out of luck if you live in an area served by Nu-Venture.
Still, it’s a good scheme overall given a bus fare previously could often cost upwards of £5. Good news came this week as the government, which has been renewing the scheme on a three-monthly basis, gave a longer-term commitment to passengers. With a catch, of course.
The scheme will continue in its current form until the end of October 2023, and will then continue until November 2024 at an increased fare of £2.50.
This still represents an improvement over previous fares, but it isn’t quite as eye-catching as the current £2 offer.
The end date of November 2024 is interesting, particularly as it seems to take us right up to when a General Election is due but not beyond it. Purely a coincidence, no doubt.
Covid in numbers
The hospital data graphic we’ve used since the launch of this newsletter is no longer being published, so it’s just raw numbers from here on out.
Hospitalisations: There are currently 4 patients being treated for covid in Medway Hospital, with none of them on a ventilator. This is in line with last week.
Deaths: 4 new deaths were recorded this week, taking Medway to 1,035 covid deaths in total.
The new faces of opposition
We keep saying we’re going to write about politics less now that the election is over, but here we are once again.
With previous Conservative leader Alan Jarrett standing down from Medway Council, and a number of frontrunners for the post losing their seats on election night, the group needed to select leadership. Last night they met and elected Cllr Adrian Gulvin as group leader and Cllr Elizabeth Turpin as deputy.
Cllr Gulvin has been a Medway councillor since 2011, and a Cabinet member for much of that time, including an extensive period where he was in charge of Medway’s CCTV system and was oblivious to that fact until things went terribly wrong. So a safe pair of hands then.
In 2018, he famously described gangs in Medway as “being in a lower league than Chatham Town (Football Club)” and called them “silly little boys trying to play a game”, quotes unlikely to resonate in a week where Medway has seen four knife crime incidents (more details below). Last year, he called an NHS team “incompetent idiots” over arguments on how to redevelop Britton Farm Mall in Gillingham. He also asserted in the council chamber that residents were more concerned about flytipping than violence against women. He also argued that fracking would be a good idea too.
So, a safe pair of hands then.
Conversely, Cllr Turpin joined Medway Council in 2019, representing Strood Rural. Sh hasn’t held any formal portfolio role and was one of the rebel alliance last year in the Great Conservative Local Plan War of 2022. Cllr Turpin is a competent speaker in meetings and signals a new direction from the old guard of the previous administration. Unlike Cllr Gulvin.
It will be interesting if the Conservative group can keep their internal disputes from spilling out into the open under this new leadership. With the first full Medway Council meeting since the local elections taking place next week, we might get our first hints then.
When is an NHS pay award not an NHS pay award?
An infuriating story here, which will see over 1,500 healthcare workers in Medway miss out on the recent NHS pay rise because the government regards them as second-tier workers.
While unions agreed to a pay deal with the government that will see all NHS staff receive a significant pay increase and a lump sum payment, staff at Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) discovered this week that they won’t be getting it.
In these times of extensive privatisation, a large amount of NHS services are provided by companies like MCH, a social enterprise company that exists purely to provide local healthcare. In Medway, MCH provides blood test services, dementia services, community nursing, palliative care, physiotherapy and lots more. The full list on their website is very long.
As the majority of MCH’s funding comes directly from the NHS, and staff are on the same contracts as NHS staff, they reasonably assumed that they were in line for the same pay rise. The government has now signalled that they are not prepared to fund this, and as they rely almost entirely on the NHS for funding, they are going to struggle to meet the pay award in a way that won’t impact services. Staff and managers at the organisation seem equally exasperated by the situation.
The whole situation is a mess and seems rather insulting for a group of essential workers who worked hard throughout the pandemic, often putting themselves and their own families at risk to do so. The government should see sense and come up with the funding to support these workers, and not put them in a grim position purely because they came out the wrong side of the privatisation lottery.
In brief
🏥 Medway Hospital’s use of ‘virtual wards’ has saved them £160k. The system allows patients to be treated at home while being monitored remotely by clinicians.
🌱 The man who lobbied for the heroic Strood bollard to be removed is now angry about grass. The gloriously unhinged complaint in the article is complete with pictures of the ‘knee-high’ grass that reaches nowhere near anyone’s knees.
🛒 A Strood resident wants an empty shop turned into an indoor market. They’ve launched a petition for the scheme, and the ambition is to be welcomed, but there’s no plan for how to make it happen.
🚔 A man has been charged with attempted murder following a stabbing on Rochester High Street last week. The incident saw two people injured.
🚨 Three knife crime incidents have taken place in Gillingham this week. One on Mill Road near Medway Park, another on Byron Road near Medway Hospital, and a third on Third Avenue near Woodlands Road.
More Authority
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Footnotes
If you hear about any Medway news that might be of interest, let me know! Hit reply to message me directly, DM me on Twitter, or leave a comment below.
Music that soundtracked the creation of this newsletter: Murmur by REM, Death Club by Slime City, and Searching For A Stream by Garden Centre.
Just a comment about the grass guy
He is quoted saying “I am a Taurian, I am a bull, I will not be fobbed off about this. We are frightened to walk in the grass as you do not know what you are treading on.”
I thought bulls loved grass?