PTA warns councils over deficits
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• Merseyside Passenger Transport Authority will not take responsibility for deficits incurred in the current year by local authority transport undertakings. Any deficit budgeted for this year must be a charge on the rates of the town concerned, said Aid. H. Macdonald Stewart, the Merseyside PTA chairman.
The PTA, he said, had the right to challenge actions of individual transport authorities from last April.
But from Birkenhead has come a call for
a clear Government ruling on this issue. CHI% David Fletcher, deputy leader of the Conservative Group on Birkenhead Town Council, claimed that it was originally thought that. the PTA could take over assets and liabilities, but during discussions about proposed increases in fares in Birkenhead, it had been run-toured that this was not true.
Cllr. Fletcher added that if the PTA did take over deficits, it could recoup the losses by increasing fares or by imposing a precept on the rates. If it did not take over the deficits, the local authorities would have to recoup the money from the rates.