Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
MR DAVID
ROWLANDS, CB, MR
BOB LINNARD
23 JANUARY 2006
Q140 Mr Davidson: Do we assume then
that does not work?
Mr Rowlands: I think the local
authority ought to know.
Q141 Mr Davidson: No, I was discussing
in terms of passengers. Do we assume that the right of passengers
to complain, activate the Traffic Commissioners, take action and
such, that that route does not work?
Mr Rowlands: I think it is unlikely
to work for many people.
Q142 Mr Davidson: The second one
was the local authority. I get the impression from all of this
that the local authorities are in relationship to the operators
more a supplement than anything else, because unless the local
authorities are willing to fund bus routes, they are dependent
entirely on the goodwill of the operators because the operators
do things as and when they see fit. There is mention in the Report
on several occasions about wishing to maintain a good relationship.
Do you think that is a reasonable assessment?
Mr Rowlands: If you are asking
should local authorities seek to build a productive partnership
with the local operators, that must be right. I do not think that
precludes a local authority putting a formal complaint to the
Traffic Commissioners where they have an operator whose performance
seriously departs from the registered timetable.
Q143 Mr Davidson: How often does
that happen?
Mr Rowlands: From memory in the
last couple of years the Commissioners have had 38 public inquires
into bus companies.
Q144 Mr Davidson: How many of those
came from local authority complaints?
Mr Rowlands: That I do not know,
I would have to write to the Committee with that.[6]
Q145 Mr Davidson: You do not know whether
or not any local authority has ever complained, do you?
Mr Rowlands: I cannot honestly
answer.
Q146 Mr Davidson: That route would
not seem to be feasible either?
Mr Linnard: I cannot answer that
direct question, but one of the things we are asking local authorities
to do over the next five years of the second local transport planning
period is to set targets for, among other things, bus punctuality,
and then to monitor and report to us on the achievement against
targets. They will be doing their own monitoring of punctuality
of local bus services, or a sample of them, and that will give
them the information if they want to pursue complaints.
Q147 Mr Davidson: We have got nothing
on that at the moment?
Mr Rowlands: Sorry, to go back
to what I said earlier, that is what I think we need to explore
in terms of getting more information.
Q148 Mr Davidson: The third route
of complaint was the other operators. How many other operators
have complained about poor punctuality by a particular company?
Mr Rowlands: As I could not answer
your first question I cannot answer that.
Q149 Mr Davidson: Of the three routes
for complaints none of them would seem to be effective at all?
Mr Rowlands: There were nevertheless
38 public inquiries, so they must be getting complaints.
Q150 Mr Davidson: Do you think that
is a good figure? How many buses do you think are running at any
one time or how many routes are there in England?
Mr Linnard: I cannot answer that
off the top of my head.[7]
Q151 Mr Davidson: To the nearest million,
how many routes? Give us to the nearest 1,000, 100,000?
Mr Rowlands: Heaven knows; I have
no idea. There are four billion journeys a year.
Q152 Mr Davidson: Do you think 38
is a reasonable figure?
Mr Rowlands: That requires you
to know in detail down at route level and by region, bus punctuality
performance. That is the information we are going to get the local
authorities helpfully to put together in the context of the new
Local Transport Plans.
Q153 Mr Davidson: You do not seem
to know very much about this in terms of you controlling the bus
companies, do you?
Mr Rowlands: Mr Davidson, we are
not trying to control the bus companies. This is a private sector
industry. 80% of bus services are provided commercially.
Q154 Mr Davidson: That is right,
but you do have some degree of responsibility for them, do you
not?
Mr Rowlands: I am not denying
that either.
Q155 Mr Davidson: That is right.
You can only exercise your responsibility if you know what is
going on. There is quite a noticeable contrast, is there not,
between what happens in the regulation of buses and the regulation
of rail operators where there is a whole structure of measurement
and targets and production on detail and so on? Why do you think
that has developed in this discrepancy?
Mr Rowlands: Because it reflects
the different natures of the two industries. As I have said, 80%
of bus services are provided commercially on a non-franchised
basis. The railway industries are all franchises, and most of
them are receiving subsidy directly from the Government. It is
a completely different structure. Franchises reflect franchise
obligations in terms of the contract and they are therefore monitored.
80% of bus services are provided commercially, in just the same
way that the airlines provide services commercially.
Q156 Helen Goodman: Earlier on you
were at pains to point out to me that you did not have control
over the relative subsidies because the decisions were taken largely
at local level, but in answer to Mr Clark you revealed that there
is, in fact, something called the Transport Innovation Fund. Am
I right in thinking also that the Department sets the level of
the rural bus subsidy grant and the rural bus challenge fund?
Mr Rowlands: I think the rural
bus challenge fund is being wound up but, yes, we do provide a
rural bus service grant.
Q157 Helen Goodman: Have you done
any assessment of the effectiveness of that?
Mr Linnard: We have done an assessment
of how many services have been supported through it. We can let
you have the details of that.
Mr Rowlands: It is something over
2,000 services are supported through the rural bus subsidy grant.
Q158 Helen Goodman: It would be possible
in theory to make a comparison between the effectiveness of that
and the effectiveness of what is being done at a local level,
would it not?
Mr Rowlands: I guess we can in
terms of that particular grant and those services. The rural bus
subsidy grant runs at about £50 million a year which is a
relatively small part of whatever it is, the £1 billion a
year, that goes into bus subsidy one way or another.
Helen Goodman: It certainly is and I
am wondering if it would be economic to increase it, but I would
not want to draw you into policy matters so I will not.
Q159 Mr Mitchell: Since it is now
in large parts of the country an oligopoly, two big companies
dominating the service and operating nationally together, would
it not be useful to have the figures which Mr Davidson was talking
about in terms of delays, consumer dissatisfaction, breakdown
and age of the rolling stock on a national basis so you can see
which companies are performing best through what degree of subsidy
and which are performing badly?
Mr Rowlands: What we are going
to get out of the new Local Transport Plans is each local authority
setting targets for reliability, satisfaction and then monitoring
it. That is coming back through the Department, so, yes, you can
then begin to build a picture together. As I say, there are some
interesting questions as to how you get that information out at
a public and a local level.
6 Note by witness: Traffic Area Offices received
a total of 470 complaints about bus services in 2004/5. Some of
the complaints covered a number of aspects but complaints were
predominantly about service reliability. We do not have a detailed
breakdown of the number of complaints submitted by different categories
of complainant. Back
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