Examination of Witnesses (Questions 360-379)
MR PHILIP
BROWN
28 JUNE 2006
Q360 Mrs Ellman: Let me put it the
other way on. Suppose the Traffic Commissioners were abolished
and the powers all transferred to local authorities, would anything
be lost by that?
Mr Brown: Yes, it would because
it would then certainly leave a bus company which had an issue
with a local authoritythe local authority may not be co-operatingopen
to the lack of any independent body to deal with those issues.
The strength of Traffic Commissioners is that they are independent
of both central and local government and they are there to deal
with these issues as independent regulators as such, and that
is what would be lost, I think.
Q361 Mrs Ellman: Which of your powers
would you say you have used most effectively?
Mr Brown: In terms of bus priority
measures?
Q362 Mrs Ellman: In terms of buses
in general.
Mr Brown: In terms of buses in
general, it has been mainly on dealing with poorly maintained
buses rather than bus reliability. We get very few bus reliability
cases, it has to be said, so I do not want this to go out of all
proportion. What I am saying is that may be to do with datathe
point I was making earlier on. Most effectively has been when
a bus operator has been found to be lacking in terms of maintenance
and as a first measure taking away their ability to run further
services because you have removed some of their buses off their
licence and then try to make a difference with that by saying,
"If this happens again then you are actually going to lose
buses that matter (in other words beyond the peak vehicle requirement)
and you are going to dig into that," which will stop them
running services. The Traffic Commissioners are loath to do that
unless absolutely necessary. It has happened a couple of times
and it has made a difference in terms of the operator making sure
that their maintenance systems are effective.
Q363 Mrs Ellman: Are there any areas
where the Department for Transport could be more active?
Mr Brown: The Department for Transport
could be more active in firstly giving us more staff to monitor
bus services and to analyse the data to enable us to do that effectively.
That would be a quick-fix, if you like, from changing legislation
to impose obligations on the bus operators to provide those figures,
but again it would only be a quick-fix.
Q364 Mrs Ellman: Is it not an important
fix?
Mr Brown: I think it would be
a very important fix. It may actually reveal that in terms of
bus reliability, it is more reliable than it appears to be from
the 2005 statistics which have just been published, because again
that monitoring exercise was only carried out over a two or three-week
period at selected bus stops in non-peak hours.
Q365 Mrs Ellman: What sort of increase
would you be looking for in terms of staff and skills?
Mr Brown: Within England and Wales
at least a doubling, probably a tripling to make it effective.
In England and Wales there are currently six or seven bus compliance
officers who are paid for by the Department for Transport. Wales
have a couple more paid for by the Welsh Assembly, and Scotland
for that matter also.
Q366 Chairman: What are the total
numbers for all of them by country, do you know?
Mr Brown: In England, Wales and
Scotland?
Q367 Chairman: England is what?
Mr Brown: England is about six.
Q368 Chairman: Scotland is?
Mr Brown: Scotland is probably
three or four now because some of them are paid for by the Scottish
Executive.
Q369 Chairman: And the Assembly in
Wales pays for two?
Mr Brown: They pay for two.
Q370 Chairman: Bringing the total
number to?
Mr Brown: Round about nine or
ten.
Q371 Mr Scott: What level of complaints
do you get about security and anti-social behaviour?
Mr Brown: Very few. When they
come in, the first thing I would do is send it to the bus operator
to investigate and, secondly, if it is a serious issue, I would
send it to the VOSA compliance officers to investigate, although
they do not really get involved in that at all.
Q372 Mr Scott: Can I go back to what
you were saying about local authorities. In a number of areas,
if I take my own constituency, there is nothing you can do for
a bus priority lane because 95% of the roads are single lane.
It is totally impossible. In that sort of area what would you
suggest as a priority for buses?
Mr Brown: It depends upon whether
there is a problem in terms of congestion or in terms of bus reliability.
As far as Traffic Commissioners are concerned, they do not set
the timetables. It is the bus operators' timetables. They may
be, if they are subsidised services, according to whatever a local
authority wants, whatever they have contracted with the local
authority but it is the bus operators. They can run to whatever
timetables they want to run. As long as they are registeredand
I have no say whether something is registered or not provided
they give the statutory 56 days' noticeso in those terms
it is up to the operators to assess what they can do to run their
services on time. I only get involved when they do not run their
services in accordance with their registered timetables.
Q373 Graham Stringer: What I want
to get at is how safe services are with 30% of the buses nationally
not being right. When bus operators were giving us evidence they
implied and gave examples that this was torn seats and relatively
trivial issues. Of those 30% that are stopped, what percentage
would you describe as a serious risk to the travelling public?
Mr Brown: I do not have those
statistics in front of me. This is only from my feeling and experience
as a Traffic Commissioner dealing with bus operators over the
last 15 or 16 years, but in those terms I would say that the majority
of the 30%, about 50 to 60%, are probably not road-safety critical
issues. They may be technical issues which, of course, may impact
on road safety at a later stage, if I can put it that way. I do
not know what the split between delayed prohibition, which are
the not so serious ones, and immediate prohibition is, but, having
said that, when you get an immediate prohibition, which is a road-safety
critical item and is S-marked, that is when it becomes significant.
Sadly, although we see many fewer bus operators than we do for
example haulage operators, in that role, what we tend to find
is that with bus operators the defects tend to be more serious.
Q374 Graham Stringer: Right, so can
you give us any percentage of immediate prohibitions?
Mr Brown: I just said I could
not do that.
Q375 Graham Stringer: I know but
then you started to give some statistics that made me think we
might be getting somewhere.
Mr Brown: I am afraid I cannot
help you there.
Q376 Graham Stringer: Is it possible
for you to provide them?
Mr Brown: I am sure I can get
those figures from the VOSA Annual Report. There is an annual
report presented each year by the Vehicle and Operator Services
Agency and all those statistics will be logged.
Q377 Graham Stringer: Thank you.
You said previously I think in answer to Mrs Ellman that you changed
operators' behaviour by having inquiries and rulings. We have
heard evidence from the Transport & General Workers' Union
and others that when First Manchester had faulty services de-registered
they immediately re-registered them as First Pioneer. This was
after quite serious safety issues. Did you not as a Commissioner
feel you were being undermined by this? I know it is not your
area.
Mr Brown: I am sure my colleague
in Manchester would have felt that because that is just trying
to get round the legislation, it is being disingenuous, is it
not?
Q378 Chairman: "Cheating"
is the word you are looking for, Mr Brown.
Mr Brown: I think it is. I was
trying to be more delicate than that.
Q379 Graham Stringer: Do you think
the rules should be changed to stop that?
Mr Brown: You have to go into
the realms of company law and all kinds of intricate rules in
order to do that, but if there was a simple way of doing it, yes,
of course. The trouble with that of course is that at the moment
vehicles are not specified on a PSV operator's licence whereas
they are on a goods vehicle operator's licences, so you might
be able to stop that if vehicles could be specified as individual
registrations, yes.
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