KENT County Council is prepared to act as a trial
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area for its route franchising alternative to the Government's total deregulation plans.
Kent representatives indicated this when they gave evidence to a hearing of the Commons all-party transport committee last week.
While they said they generally supported the Government's aims in deregulating bus services, they reiterated their fear that the plans in last year's White Paper would add to Kent's subsidy bill rather than reduce it.
Instead, they said that franchising would support the aim of competition, but confine it to offices where bargaining could take place on subsidy levels for supported routes.
They said they envisaged franchises being offered in varying sizes, from a single vehicle rural operation to a 25bus operation in an urban area.
But Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley ruled out the introduction of franchised bus routes as an alternative to deregulation, in the Commons last week.
Mr Ridley told MPs that the franchising proposals, backed by the Bus amd Coach Council, would not produce anything like the same scale of benefits as deregulation.
In particular it would mean the councils, and not the market, determining the pattern of services, while operators with franchises would be protected from competition.
• The long awaited Buses Bill is now expected to be published by the end of the month. It has been slightly delayed because of the need to take account of the 7,000 responses that have been received during the consultation period.
Mr Ridley said a large proportion of those responses was about the effect of deregulation on rural services.
• Junior Transport Minister Michael Spicer said it had still not been finally decided which towns would qualify as part of rural areas for the purpose of qualifying for transitional grant aid for bus services.
Mr Spicer revealed that the £20m available in the third year would be given through the fuel duty rebate scheme.