Threshold payments poser for Traffic Commissioners
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EVIDENCE that the Traffic Commissioners are reacting in different ways to the demands placed on bus companies by threshold wage payments has come to light in a Cit1 investigation this week. In some areas they appear to have accepted the principle of agreeing fares increases before they are necessary while elsewhere they have stuck fast to the principle of allowing all objectors to have their say.
The result is that some National Bus Company subsidiaries can implement fare increases only two weeks after they make a threshold payment while other companies have to wait two months or more. It is this delay which has been blamed by NBC chiefs in the past for many of their financial difficulties.
Ribble in the North Western traffic area and Norther General in the Northern traffic area have both had fares applications approved which specify that they can increase specified fares by predetermined amounts as soon as the next threshold payment is made.
East Kent and Maidstone and District in the South Eastern area both had similar applications refused last week. Instead, the Commissioners allowed an immediate increase virtually as requested but refused to sanction further rises to cater for threshold payments. They suggested speeding up the existing system making increases if granted — possible in some eight weeks instead of the more normal ten.
Mr Guy Neely, finance director of the NBC, told CM this week that the problem was one of "adapting the creaking machinery tothe modern intlationery spiral". He said that once the-current round of fares applications was completed there would be a case for considering how different Commissioners had reacted.
For some time the trade associations had been pressing the DoE to approve the principle of fares increases being granted on an "act now — talk later" basis. But he said that threshold payments accounted for only a minor portion of the present annual rate of 20 per cent inflation. Increased prices for steel, for example, gave cause for just as much alarm.