(15 Jun 2020, 2:28 pm)streetdeckfan wrote But, correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't the additional money that the bus operators have received comes from central government rather from the local councils?
So using the argument that they're receiving money from government to want control locally is a bit silly.
The councils do have control over the tendered routes, which is what they're paying for.
Nexus, Northumberland County Council and Durham County Council continue to maintain concessionary fare and tendered bus service payments to bus operators at pre-pandemic levels as a result of a government request.
This quote from Tobyn Hughes puts it in to some perspective.
“Prior to the Covid-19 crisis, 61% of funding came from passenger fares, 33% from local authorities and 6% from central government. Since the emergency funding measures were put in place, only 5% comes from passenger fares, 54% from local authorities and 42% from central government.”
Indeed, payments for the four weeks from 17 March were based on an average of the operator’s four-weekly commercial BSOG live kilometres operated in 2017/18. The DfT then used an assumed service level of 50% during the period that the first payment will cover, and the initial pence per kilometre rate, to calculate the first sum to be transferred to the operator.
Rightly or wrongly, operators have a slightly bigger begging bowl at the moment and if their network reduced in the period since 2017/18, they clicked big style