Eastern Counties hit
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FIFTY JOBS and 144 bus journeys have been axed in the past few months as one National Bus Company subsidiary has come to terms with the withdrawal of network support from a shire county.
Norfolk County Council, which paid NBC's Eastern Counties £500,000 block support in the year CO April 1985, has now confined its 1985/86 £794,200 total support budget to specific routes along the lines which will become common from next year, once the Transport Bill is law.
Network support is still being paid to Eastern Counties in the Great Yarmouth area and to Great Yarmouth Borough Council's transport' undertaking, to give the borough council longer to adjust to the new regime. But this is only a temporary arrangement.
Individual tenders have been sought by the council for each supported service, and Eastern Counties has already reviewed services in three areas — East Dereham, Fakenham and South Norfolk — and bid for support there.
Company traffic manager Steve Dawson told CM that 144 individual journeys have been withdrawn as a result of these reviews. In addition, 92 journeys have been cut short, 27 have been diverted to miss out communities, and the timings on 15 services have been altered by more than 30 minutes.
Forty nine of those journeys were put out to tender.
The withdrawn journeys are only a small proportion of the total service provided by Eastern Counties, but Dawson says that in some cases they have taken out two of four or five journeys to particular villages.
Norfolk's assistant county surveyor, Brian Stead, says that so far no peak period journeys have been cut. Evening journeys have been left out where few people use them. "The council members say they want to preserve the present level of service provision, but they are not going to preserve empty runs," he told CM.
The council's planning transportation committee chairman, Ian Coutts, says the council believes the move away from network support gives better value for money. it is not a policy designed to help private operators at the expense of Eastern Counties.
But he ruled Out any county initiative to attract more business on to buses and so reduce the demand for subsidies.
Apart from one job at an outstation, the cuts have not led to any redundancies among driving staff, but around 50 clerical, supervisory and engineering jobs have gone.
The process of cutting back has still to affect Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn, and a further review of Norwich city services — which have already lost some evening and Sunday services — is likely before routes are registered for life after deregulation next year.
None of the parties involved has a clear view of how next year's revenue support will be paid, but Stead plans to give the planning and transportation committee a document in December setting out a policy for the transitional stages of deregulation next year.
According to Jo Guiver of the Norfolk Bus Users' Consultative Committee, which is likely to oppose further service reductions, many of the cuts have been implemented with little advance notice.