Bolton Council vote to welcome publicly owned buses

This comes after the government announced it would be removing the ban on creating new publicly owned bus companies all over the country.

A motion put to Bolton Council last week called on the authority to welcome the government’s Better Buses Bill and the lifting of the ban.

Bolton Council cabinet member for transport, housing and highways Cllr Hamid Khurram said: “The results of greater public control speak for themselves.

“Since the Bee Network was introduced in Bolton ridership has increased by five per cent, fare revenue has exceeded forecasts, the cost per km to taxpayers is lower than the deregulated system and punctuality has jumped from 69 per cent to 83 per cent.”

Publicly owned buses could be a possibility soon (Image: Newsquest)

This comes with buses across Greater Manchester coming under public control in three traches, with the first covering Bolton and Wigan from September last year.

The next tranche saw public control expanded to Bury, Rochdale and Oldham with the third set to cover the rest of the city region from January next year.

Cllr Sean Fielding, who sits as Bolton’s substitute member on the Bee Network committee said: “We’ve seen that public control works, and elsewhere we’ve seen that public ownership works too.

“Publicly owned bus companies in Nottingham, Edinburgh and Blackpool have high levels of passenger satisfaction, win more awards than private ones, and can reinvest any profits into the service rather than paying them to shareholders.

"By failing to welcome the lifting of the ban on Greater Manchester creating its own publicly-owned bus company, the Conservatives have voted to put profits before Bolton bus passengers.”

The motion put by Cllr Khurran and Cllr Fielding passed by 38 votes to 13.

The legislation to give all local transport authorities new powers to run their own bus services will be laid before Parliament on Monday in the form of a statutory instrument.

As it stands only metro mayors, like Greater Manchester’s Andy Burnham, can currently control bus services in this way.

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But opponents have claimed that the plans are not properly costed.

Shadow transport secretary Helen Whately said: “Labour’s plans are unfunded.

“They need to explain whether local authorities will raise council tax or make cuts to vital services like social care to fund this.

“Moreover, it won’t make a blind bit of difference for passengers.

“It won’t increase the number of services and they would much prefer to have the £2 fare cap extended at the budget.”