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Support cash fears

15th December 1984
Page 16
Page 16, 15th December 1984 — Support cash fears
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Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

NATIONAL Bus Company fears that some counties may lose up to 50 per cent of their bus support cash when Transport Supplementary Grant becomes capital only have prompted the House of Commons transport committee to ask NBC for a paper explaining how it would implement cuts in its services.

NBC were providing its evidence to the committee's public transport finance inquiry last week, when NBC executive director Tony Beetham said that TSG will be lost in April 1985 and any transport grant will be an unspecified amount paid to counties as part of their rates support grants.

Mr Beetham said Hertfordshire feared that it could suffer up to 50 per cent loss of grant. This would lead to a drastic cut in services, and the sudden change in financing would be "very disastrous unless there was a safety net to cushion it."

He said it was difficult to • raise fares to cover the loss as they were already at the "threshold". It would depend on how far the county could make up the loss of Government funds, but rate capping was another obstacle, he said.

On privatisation, NBC said that Transport Secretary Nicholas Ridley had asked it to look at a wider range of options than just a split into four major groups (CM, December 8). But chief executive Robert Brook said that privatisation of the NBC would be a "shot in the dark". How would the Government get a reasonable price when no-one knows what the market will be like after deregulation?

• In his last public engagement as National Bus Company chairman, Lord Shepherd gave a strong warning last week to a separate audience of the danger of lower maintenance standards which may result from deregulation.

"My company does not fear competition but we are concerned with what might happen to maintenance standards," he said. "When I see some of our new competitors with vehicles I could buy for £1,000, being driven by unskilled drivers, the danger is obvious."


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