Inverness loses bus war
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• Inverness Traction has gone into receivership with debts of 2110,000 — the loser in a bitter 10-month bus war with municipally owned Highland Scottish Omnibuses.
IT managing director Malcolm Vaughan and his fellow directors were about to shut up shop for the last time when the receiver told them to stay on the road for a possible buyer.
Vaughan refutes newspaper reports of a 'rescue bid' by an un-named operator.
"Rescue bid is a misnomer," he says. "The people here who started the company last May are all out and no debts have been taken on. Someone else is going to cash in on our hard work."
The mystery buyer will need drivers to run the 19 minibuses, so Vaughan believes Traction's 32 staff will probably hold on to their jobs.
Vaughan is furious at the Scottish Office for allowing what he describes as Highland's anti-competitive strategy to run Inverness Traction off the road. He is frustrated at the Office of Fair Trading's slow reaction to his complaints about the situation. The company complained over six months ago to the Traffic Commissioner and the OFT.
Vaughan is confident the OFT will find against Highland. "When we started, Highland was carrying forward a loss of £1.6 million so it cannot have been an above-board economic decision to cut fares by up to two-thirds and flood routes with extra vehicles," he says.
The OFF is due to report on the affair by mid-April, but whatever it decides, it will be too late for Traction.
Local MP Sir Russell Johnston has lashed the OFT over its tardiness. "If it is incapable of reaching much quicker decisions, the office should be abolished or confined to long-term trends," he says.
"I will not mourn their passing," says Highland's operations manager Kenneth Stewart. "It is just something that has happened."
Managing director of the Scottish Bus Group, Malcolm Howard, says he is "confident that the company has followed the code of conduct and has nothing to fear from any investigation".
Vaughan is cynical about the news that Highland is to increase its fares by 10% from 10 April. "With us out of the way they are going to try and recoup their losses," he says, "I expect them to withdraw a lot of the vehicles they used to attack us as well."
For Vaughan and his Traction team, the future looks bleak. The company was always under-capitalised and an attempted deal with an English partner to inject some financial clout (CM 16-22 February) fell through. The directors now face having to sell their homes to pay off the debts.