(21 Dec 2016, 11:58 pm)Jamie M wrote What makes this particularly hard is the amount of counsils involved in the regulation.
You have DCC, Newcasle County Counsil, Gateshead Counsil, North Tyneside Counsil, South Tyneside Counsil, Unitary Authorities (Hartlepool/M'bro) and Northumberland County Counsil.
To come up with some sensible restrictions, you need counsil monitoring - which is impossible given the number of different counsils which will all have their own take on what should be done. After all, companies like GNE satisfy the counsils by providing all of the contracts which have their own restrictions. There is certainly price ammendments made by these contracts - just there is no way to bridge the different counsil's regulations into one central monitoring system.  Here's a made up example..

Say DDC, Gateshead Counsil and Newcastle City Counsil (the latter under nexus) agree to join together to make route X70 more affordable.
£1 to the boundery from Consett -> Crookgate, £1 to Newcastle from there. Nexus and Go North East then look at the figures and realise that not nearly enough people are getting on the Bus in or through T&W to make ends meet. Nexus then decide that the prices can be put up allow the leg of the journey to be economically plausable for both operator and nexus itself. So the price then shifts up to £1.50 to go from Crookgate to Gateshead. Are DCC going to then reduce the price of their share of the route? No, because that's going to mess with their figures and contracts. The price - one end to the other is going to be £2.50.

I may be talking utter.. uhm... nonsense with my example, and indeed all of this, but this is how I picture it with contracts involved.

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As Ambassador pointed out, you have NECA who pull each local council together under the one umbrella.
Granted there may be interests or representatives within the council which undermine it as a whole or have their own agenda, but I'm not sure there would be the situation you describe with the X70.

The tender would go out and each operator would bid for it based on affordability and costs. Issues such as the Stanley Travel example would also be a factor. 
I'm not sure Nexus and/or a local council authority would be too interested in changing the tender to make ends meet either. That's up to the operator who put in the bid to sort out. 

Stanley did used to run a number of evening Nexus contracts prior to the initial takeover by GNE in the early 2000's.
I am sure their currently business model could be adapted if they felt there was enough opportunity.

It is maybe worth noting that the council's on Teesside come under the 'Connect Tees Valley' brand, similar to the T&W councils working under Nexus. 
Subsidies and funding within the Connect LA's and immediate surroundings is minimal, with only Redcar & Cleveland providing (as far as I'm aware) anything above and beyond commercial operations.

Whilst contracts with PTE'S or LA's may have a knock on effect with monopolies in some areas, I think a bigger cause is de-reg.
Whilst it was meant to offer competition, it has clearly resulted in a 'survival of the fittest' after any initial bus wars subsided.
The farce that was ANE v GNE and subsequent investigations regarding business carve-ups seem to back the claim up, that de-reg failed the customer.