\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0
\nThe Labour Party has announced plans to take significant steps to reform bus services in England if it wins the next general election, claiming that \u201cdecades of failed deregulation have left communities with little say over the essential services they rely on\u201d.<\/p>\n
Pointing to new data that suggests thousands of bus services have been lost in recent years, with over 1,000 services cut in the past year alone, shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said Labour would \u201creform the country\u2019s broken bus system and hand power and control to local communities\u201d. She announced plans for a Take Back Control Act as part of the first King\u2019s Speech of a Labour government. The proposed legislation would give local communities more control over public transport in their area.<\/p>\n
This reform would:<\/p>\n
Extend the chance to franchise bus services to every community;
\nIntroduce a presumption in favour of franchising to halt delays;
\nLift the legal ban on setting up new municipal bus companies introduced by the government in the 2017 Bus Services Act.<\/p>\n
Labour will fix our broken bus system \u2013 and we\u2019ll do it by giving power and control of bus services to the communities who depend on them<\/p>\n
Launching the policy last week, Haigh said: \u201cLabour will fix our broken bus system \u2013 and we\u2019ll do it by giving power and control of bus services to the communities who depend on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government introduced bus franchising powers in the 2017 Bus Services Act, but Haigh\u2019s plans drew scorn from buses minister Richard Holden. He said: \u201cThey want bureaucrats to run bus services instead of bus companies and, with no mention of funding, it\u2019s council taxpayers who will end up paying.\u201d <\/p>\n
Norman Baker: Buses are in reverse \u2013 but who has a plan?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0 DON\u2019T MISS OUT \u2013 GET YOUR COPY! \u2013\u00a0click here to subscribe!<\/a><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The post Labour would presume in favour of franchising<\/a> first appeared on Passenger Transport<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u200b\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Take Back Control Act would streamline path to greater bus powers with a presumption in favour of franchising for all local transport authoritiess \u00a0 \u00a0 The Labour Party has announced plans to take significant steps to reform bus services in England if it wins the next general election, claiming that \u201cdecades of failed deregulation have left communities with little say…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
This story appears in the latest issue of\u00a0Passenger Transport<\/em>. <\/strong><\/p>\n