29 Sep 2015, 5:33 am
#375
(29 Sep 2015, 5:15 am)mark62 The county council fund all of the services and do absolutely nothing to promote them. At present they are cutting back massively on tendered services. The 682 Hexham to Colwell bus is being withdrawn. The operator Go Northeast who run the service under contract to the county council haven’t given the transport commissioner the required 56 days minimum notice for a service change or withdrawal. The list is endless of unprofessional, bordering on illegal activities.
Hi Mark - just want to pick up on the point quoted in this post.
I refer to
this document (Page 14 - Part 3). There are a number of cases when services may be registered, cancelled or changed with less than 56 days' notice.
When the contracts were registered initially, I believe they were registered with less than 56 days' notice, but I believe that these services were registered to replace a service which another operator intended to stop running. As such, in accordance with the guidelines on the link above, Go North East did not have to give 56 days' notice to VOSA. The new services were introduced from 3rd August 2015, and the journeys on one service were merely being introduced as a trial. The regular 56 days' notice would have meant that Go North East would have had to submit the amendment registration by 16th August 2015 - but this would have only allowed a two-week trial. It seems obvious to me that there was a three-month trial, and the reason for the short-notice registration would fall under "there are circumstances which you could have not reasonably foreseen which prevented you from giving the full 56 days' notice to register, cancel or change the service".
The councils often advise the operators themselves with very little advance notice, and contracted services which have gone out to tender are always subject to change at last minute. The reason why the exceptions on the above link exist are because it is not always practical to give 56 days' notice (however inconvenient this is to passengers) - I would not expect larger groups such as Arriva, First, Go-Ahead and Stagecoach to be breaking the law.
