The Chronicle (South Tyneside and Durham)
Labour pledges to help get bus plans moving
LABOUR’S shadow secretary has vowed that she would “really speed up” efforts to bring the North East’s bus network back into public control.
The ability to franchise the region’s bus services is one of the key powers the new North East mayor will hold, giving control over routes, fares, and timetables. It is a move that several of the candidates for May’s historic election have said would be among their top priorities as the number of miles being driven each year by buses across the North East plummeting by nearly 29m since 2010.
On a visit to Newcastle on Thursday, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh pledged that a Labour government would make it far easier for the incoming mayor to deliver on that promise.
The Sheffield Heeley MP told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) that she would reduce bus companies’ ability to challenge franchising efforts in court, something which contributed to Andy Burnham’s ‘Bee Network’ in Greater Manchester taking six years to launch.
Speaking as she came to support Labour’s North East mayor candidate Kim Mcguinness in setting out her vision for an ‘Angel Network’ of publicly-controlled buses, Ms Haigh said the region’s current bus system was “not value for money for the taxpayer”.
She said: “We know what state the buses are in, we have lost a third of routes in the North East since 2010.“
In Greater Manchester, patronage has increased even further than they anticipated and they have been able to add on more routes and services because it is a more efficient system.
“When they did this years ago in Jersey it lowered the cost of the system by 20%, so we think this is much better value for the taxpayer.
“What we are announcing is that we would massively speed up the process.
“It took Andy six years to bring buses under public control and that is not good enough when he has been elected with a mandate to do it.
“We are announcing new legislation that will really speed up that process so that Kim could definitely get it done, certainly within her first term if not quicker.”
Ms Haigh said a Labour government would remove “obstacles” within the Bus Services Act 2017, curtailing “much of the ability of operators to challenge and reducing the time of things like the audit process.
“Operators should not be allowed to slow it down in the courts when someone has been elected with a mandate to do it.”
Ms Mcguinness, independent Jamie Driscoll, and the Green Party’s Andrew Gray have all pledged to regulate the North East’s bus network if they become mayor. Liberal Democrat Aidan King is supportive of the idea, but would wait until a public consultation before deciding whether to pursue franchising.
The Conservatives’ Guy Rennerthompson has said he would launch a region-wide review of bus services and “work with bus companies and councils” to fill gaps in the network, while also pledging to mandate that live digital timetables are installed at bus stops.
Paul Donaghy, the Reform UK candidate, has said he would prefer only “partial” public ownership.
At a campaign event in Newcastle city centre on Thursday, Ms Mcguinness told the LDRS that she would want to have the bus system reforms completed before the end of the mayor’s first four-year term.
She added: “We know we need more people to choose public transport and they are only going to do that if it becomes more appealing.
“Why is it that at the moment I can know exactly where my DPD parcel is, but I don’t know when the next bus is coming? We have to bring it into this century and make it so that people are not left standing in the cold.”
Meanwhile, the Government announced on Friday that it was giving £7.4m to fund 43 new zeroemission buses for the North East, under the Zero Emission Bus Regional Areas (ZEBRA) programme.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: “This comes on top of the £3.5bn we have invested into our bus network since 2020, protecting and improving bus routes into 2025 as well as extending the £2 bus fare cap until the end of 2024, made possible by reallocated HS2 funding.”