Glasgow PTE wants £1.9m from the local authorities
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• Local authorities in the Glasgow area are having to provide a total of £1.9m in the current financial year to help pay off the £3m-plus deficit the Greater Glasgow PTE inherited from the municipal undertaking. Under the terms of the Act governing the operations of Glasgow City transport any deficit incurred was carried forward to the next year. This procedure led to the large loss figure being accumulated.
A fares application currently before the Traffic Commissioners — due for a decision next month — is expected to pay off a large part of the deficit. Increases amount to 12+ per cent. The remaining amount — £1.9m — is being -requisitioned" from local authorities. Glasgow Corporation will pay 46 per cent of the amount but the remainder is being provided by the county authorities of Lanark, Dumbarton, Renfrew and Stirling together with the
burghs in the PTE area. At present many of these gain little or no benefit from PTE services.
In Paisley, the largest burgh in Scotland, the council last week reluctantly agreed to a requisition of £92,313, equivalent to a 2p rate. Cllr George Murray, Paisley's representative on the PTA, said that he had protested about the figure initially proposed and this had been cut by half. A former provost said that the PTA was the most expensive pig in a poke she had ever encountered.
Mr W. N. Stirling, the PTE's director of finance, told CM on Tuesday that the figure to be obtained from local authorities had been kept to the minimum possible. He appreciated that some of the authorities currently gained little from the PTA, though all bordered the Glasgow area, but, he said, the PTE "hopes to offer facilities to them soon".