SYT gets ultimatum
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• South Yorkshire Transport is the first of the former Passenger Transport Executive bus companies to be told to privatise or be broken up.
Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson followed up directives from the Department of Transport by emphasising that he has the power to break the company up. The Dip has told SY Passenger Transport Authority shareholders that it has until mid-January to lodge firm proposals for a possible employee buy-out.
The alternative is to wait for the DTp to order the break up, or for Parkinson to legislate for privatisation, which he has already threatened to do in an interview on a Sheffield local radio station.
The DTI) is dismissing a consultants' study which showed that the break up of SYT would be inefficient and against public interest. "Ministers still view some splitting of SYT as both feasible and desirable," it says. And the Dip contends that SYT's 60% market share makes it considerably larger than any of its competitors.
Busways and Yorkshire Rider have already completed employee buy-outs in anticipation of government action, but so far the DTp has been content to allow buy-outs to proceed without threat.
111 South Yorkshire Transport made a profit of .22.7m after tax and interest for 1988/89. In its first 18 months it recorded a loss of 25.2m after paying restructuring costs of £2.6m and introducing a 200% fare increase to cover the loss of nearly £40m subsidy for its former low-fare policy.