I would like to respond to a couple of recent items in routeone.
First: Transport for Wales (TfW) to expect railway staff to drive rail replacement buses. This was tried by Connex back in the 1990s when it had the franchise for the Brighton Line. Connex had this wonderful idea to use train drivers, some of whom had PSV licences, to drive rail replacement buses at weekends.
A wonderful idea, and it spent a fortune acquiring a fleet of second-hand London buses kept at vast expense at a couple of locations in south London. This was all OK, until the train drivers’ union ASLEF got wind of this wheeze. What about rest periods? Train drivers by law must have statutory minimum rest between duties.
That was one of the major stumbling blocks. Station staff, much the same story. Then, of course, we have to take into account the PSV industry rest periods; Certificate of Professional Competence requirements; whose buses could they use; how far are buses to be kept from home depots… we all know the story.
This is going to end with TfW wasting a lot of time and money on something that isn’t going to work. The Connex experiment led to the rise of the likes of Fraser Eagle, and we all remember what happened there.
Second: The call for coach companies to support the abolition of school minibuses operated on Section 19 permits. Someone, somewhere, is forgetting the sterling work of Martin Allen and Ian Ashman in taking this matter to the EU Council over the last 20-odd years. Martin succeeded in getting infraction proceedings against the UK government from the European Council, but in the meantime, Brexit reared its ugly head and put the mockers on that.
The outcome was a watered-down version of what the law actually expected, because the government knew it would cost too much money to implement. But what we have seen is the demise of several large-scale ‘community bus’ operations, some totalling over 600 minibuses, folding because they’ve been sussed by DVSA for flouting the law, operating openly for hire and reward without the correct licences.
There’s been enough discussion on this matter in this magazine over the last 20 years and more, and enough legal cases in both UK and EU courts to clearly define what hire and reward is.
It is to provide goods or services for ‘fiscal activity’. Martin Allen found this term in one of the cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union. No matter if it’s ‘not for profit’; a coach and horses was driven through that term when it was found that the top executives of some of the larger ‘not for profit’ operations were being paid handsome salaries while the drivers were volunteering their services.
But is it cheaper for schools and the like to own and run their own minibuses? In my area there are at least six ‘charity’ minibuses I know of that sit around all week and most weekends rusting away, most funded from donations. So, they have the purchase price, insurance, and road tax to fund, for what — a dozen trips a year? Surely there are enough licenced operators that have idle assets sitting around that could be used at a cheaper overall price.
It would be quite simple for the government to abolish the Section 19 permit and put paid to this abuse of the system for all time.
