De-reg bus survey to pick out cowboys
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• A survey has been commissioned in Scotland to see how passengers will be affected by the de-regulation of bus transport.
The Scottish Consumer Council is sponsoring the survey to see whether bus services and fares are improved. The survey will be carried out by Mackay Consultants of Inverness and John Farrington of Aberdeen University.
Peter Gibson of the SCC says, "Unfortunately there is a loophole in the Transport Act which we pointed out to the Scottish Office when the legislation was being drawn up. This means that a major operator who loses a tender for a particular service which it previously ran, could drive off a smaller competitor by continuing to operate its existing service at a loss.
It now appears that this loophole may have been spotted by a northern bus company which chose not to register a service it had previously operated, but then continued to run buses on the route alongside the new operator."
The SCC has written to the Office of Fair Trading about the case, claiming that it is possibly an infringement of the Competition Act.