PTA's rate row
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• A row has blown up between Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority and Newcastle upon Tyne Corporation. The PTA has decided to provide free transport facilities for elderly and disabled bus passengers. To pay for this it has decided to levy a rate precept of 4.2p in the £ (calculated on old rateable values).
Newcastle Corporation has worked out that this will cost its ratepayers a total of £492,000. The Corporation has reluctantly decided that the PTA has the right to levy a precept for this purpose (under Section 13 of the 1968 Transport Act) but is disputing the amount. It is likely to approach the Secretary of State for the Environment in an effort to get it reduced.
A spokesman for the Tory-controlled Corporation told CM this week that, together with a large precept to pay for the police force, the PTA's action would mean a 7p rate increase. Under the freeze this could cause problems because it ignored Newcastle's massive municipal building programme which also required major finance.
Mr Cyril Davies, Newcastle's city treasurer, said that he had never accepted the argument that when an old person travelled free during the day the bus operator was losing full fare. It was this principle on which the PTA had calculated its precept.