Louise Cheeseman, former TfL director of buses, warns of lack of expertise while others say public expectation levels are high for franchising schemes
Cheeseman: ‘My worry for bus reform going forward is lack of expertise’
Governments may have raised public expectations too high in their messaging on franchising and new municipal bus operators, experts in the industry and local government are warning.
Bus franchising in Greater Manchester has been presented as a major success, evidenced in particular by increased passenger numbers, but there are question marks over the necessary funding and skills to replicate this across all of the other city regions which are committed to franchising in the next few years, in addition to any other areas which choose this path after the current Bus Services Bill is passed.
Louise Cheeseman, a former Transport for London director of buses, said at the Welsh Public Transport Summit last month: “My worry for bus reform going forward is lack of expertise. What I see coming in the next two or three years is multiple transport authorities all wanting bus reform.
“But we haven’t got the expertise and haven’t got the knowledge, and it’s going to have to work more collaboratively between Local Transport Authorities, using best practice from London and Manchester, to help Liverpool, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire – because all I can see coming forward is a massive demand on people. We don’t have the expertise to deliver that, so we have to be innovative in how we’re going to deliver that.”
In addition to the workload generated by English bus franchising, Wales is legislating to roll out franchising in all areas from 2027 to 2030 and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport is exploring franchising.
An internal Scottish Government briefing in February, released through Freedom of Information, sounded a cautionary note: “In a climate of increasing fiscal pressure, it is important that the business cases for improving bus services are made robustly and in an evidenced based way to support future decision making on funding.”
Minutes of a meeting between SPT and ministers in December noted: “In the case of franchising, it can be a complex and resource-intensive task, with significant risks around funding of the set-up and preparatory tasks and potential legal challenge.”
The bus reform Bills which are progressing in the UK and Welsh parliaments both include lifting the 1985 ban on local authorities setting up new municipal bus companies.
Scottish local authorities have had this power since 2022, with the enactment of powers in 2019 legislation. None have taken up the option, but it has inspired the Get Glasgow Moving group to campaign for full public ownership of Strathclyde’s buses, on the basis that it would deliver “the same great service as Edinburgh’s Lothian Buses” and re-invest any profits in improving public transport. SPT does not intend to follow this route, except possibly for socially necessary services in fringe areas.
Association of Local Bus Managers chair David Astill said ALBUM welcomed the English Bill’s provisions for the existing municipal operators, but added: “We expect opportunities for new ones to be few and far between, except in the margins where the market is deemed to fail.”
In Wales, there is the further dimension of bus franchising in all areas, potentially leaving a new municipal with hardly any services to operate. Richard Cope, of the Association of Transport Coordinating Officers (ATCO) Cymru, said: “For us, looking at municipals, it’s the cost of setting them up in the first place, and there’s no guarantee they’re going to get any work.”
Since the Welsh Government proposed bus franchising in 2017, seemingly every Senedd question about buses has been answered by a minister pinning the blame on the public sector’s lack of control over buses.
Last month, CPT Cymru director Aaron Hill told a Senedd committee: “It seems to me that the Bill and the lead-up to the Bill have been accompanied by a narrative that bus services are not very good in Wales and this Bill will radically overhaul them and improve them.” He continued: “There is a real risk here that we’ve built up public expectation, in the same way as happened with the railways, and actually then delivery doesn’t follow, or significant improvement doesn’t follow, for a long time.”
The modelling of Welsh bus reform in the Regulatory Impact Assessment is based on no increase in overall bus mileage and what appears to be a large reduction in forecast average funding per annum compared with now (PT338).
Hill said the RIA presupposes a huge amount of inefficiency in the existing system which would cross-subsidise services that are now marginal or non-existent, but little of the Welsh network was commercial now and a huge amount was supported through contracts. Today’s operators wouldn’t exist if they were as inefficient as the RIA implied, he added.
Tim Peppin, of the Welsh Local Government Association, said one of the challenges in the proposed bus reform is “managing expectations, especially if no substantial additional funding is made available”. ATCO Cymru said “expectation levels have been raised significantly amongst residents who are looking forward to more services to more places”.
This article appears in the latest issue of Passenger Transport.
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