Transport authorities are being armed with a new power to temporarily take over the running of a local bus service, if an operator enters a quality contract but is then forced out of business by the recession.
But the new power will be strictly confined to quality contract operators which enter into quality contract schemes, and transport authorities will only be allowed 12 months to run buses while they search for a new bus operator to step in.
The Government this week asked the House of Commons to endorse the new powers – which it did – as it announced a number of concessions to councils which have been lobbying for changes to the Local Transport Bill. Transport minister, Paul Clark, told MPs the new power would allow local authorities ‘to take action, in a specific emergency situation, to protect the interests of bus passengers’.
He added: ‘The power would apply only where a quality contract operator was unable to operate the services that it had contracted with the authority to provide. ‘This is absolutely not a generalised power for local authorities to get into the business of running bus services.’
Clark rejected calls by Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs to allow a council to extend the 12-month deadline, if it had difficulty finding an alternative operator. The minister said that if the 12-month period proved insufficient, ‘it is unlikely that an authority will ever find an operator to tender’.
Despite their opposition to quality contracts, the Tories acknowledged there was a case for local authorities to be able to step in – as a last resort – if an operator got into trouble and could no longer fulfil its obligations. ‘There is a real possibility that bus operators, particularly small operators, may go out of business in the current climate,’ shadow transport minister, Stephen Hammond, said. ‘We are already seeing operators struggle as a result of the iniquitous distribution of funds for the concessionary fares scheme.’
But he cautioned that ‘normal services should be resumed as quickly as possible’, and the new power should not be used as a ‘back-door’ route to allow councils to run buses for a prolonged period.
In a U-turn, the Government also yielded to pressure from local authorities by announcing that final decisions on whether quality contract schemes went ahead would now rest with councils rather than an approvals board. The proposed approvals board is being replaced by new-styled quality contracts scheme boards, whose role will be to provide an opinion and, where appropriate, to make recommendations, but local authorities will have the final say.
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