Stagecoach North West Ltd, trading as Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire, has been issued with a formal warning by Deputy Traffic Commissioner (DTC) Fiona Harrington for failure to operate certain of its services in accordance with registered particulars.
While the DTC was satisfied that the company had on occasions failed to comply with certain of its timetables “without reasonable excuse,” she considered that this was not a case where the imposition of a penalty or sanction was needed to focus the mind of the operator to achieve the statutory purpose of section 155 of the Transport Act 2000.
Bus operation is complex and susceptible to external factors. In this case, it is also subject to region-specific additional influences, particularly concerning driver and skilled engineer recruitment and retention that the operator had been actively addressing, additional to fleet investment, with demonstrated improvements achieved.
It had been called to Public Inquiry following complaints from members of the public and Parliament. That led to a subsequent DVSA investigation. The resulting figures showed less than 95% compliance with the window of tolerance for punctuality.
The company’s investigation identified that the majority of complaints derived from one main complainant using a database source that was flawed for technical reasons, such that they were factually unfounded.
There were, however, several remaining complaints received from actual travelling passengers using the monitored services.
While the performance figures achieved were disappointing, Ms Harrington found the steps described as taken and being taken by the operator to address the issues affecting the region, as well as substantial investment in new vehicles, to be compelling and consistent with one taking reasonable measures to address the problems it had identified through its own performance monitoring.
She was satisfied that the operator engaged appropriately with relevant local authorities. Traffic congestion was a particular challenge when targeting reliability improvements.
If future substantial and substantiated complaints were received from passengers using the services provided by the operator, or their elected representatives, a meaningful sample of the services in question would require a fresh DVSA monitoring exercise, with the operator responding to the alleged failures, and with details of any reasonable excuse pleaded on a case-by-case basis.
