No new services allowed for London Country
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/ Metropolitan Traffic Commissioner Air Vice-Marshal Ronald Ashford has banned London Country Bus Services (North East) from registering any new local services.
This follows a public inquiry at which Hertfordshire County Council had told of "the inconvenience and hardship caused to the public by the company's failings".
Ashford rejected a council request that he make a determination ordering the company to pay 243,000 in fuel rebates, "The Company have, in my view, acted with a lack of prudence, perhaps a lack of consideration," he said, ", . but I cannot find they have acted with great irresponsibility, negligence, or with gross regard of the public interest."
At a public inquiry last week Linda Horner, for the county, had told Ashford that the company had accepted that 330 out of the 450 complaints against it were valid. The council had already held back some £60,000, due to the company for contract services, because of non-performance and planned to hold back other payments.
Spencer Robeson, head of the county's transport co-ordination unit, said the most serious complaints were about services not operating. These included: buses running both late and early; failures to operate scheduled services at all; services running or terminating short of their destinations; and rudeness from drivers when passengers queried the services' operation.
For London Country (North East), Micheal Waller said there had been two major problems. The first concerned engineering difficulties on its inherited ageing fleet. The second was staffing, despite continuous efforts to recruit.
Managing director Alan Bryn Jones said he accepted that, with hindsight, the company ought not to have taken on a major London Regional Transport contract for services in the St Albans area last May.
He agreed that network changes had been made in negotiation with the trade union.