(15 Aug 2022, 2:18 pm)Malarkey wrote If anything i'd say they've made them "Unfit For The Future" in past 12 months with the amount of cuts they've done, they've almost halved the service operations yet still don't have enough drivers because of taking on a number of contracts that are out of there operational remit such as Scholars/Works Contracts, Kynren/Durham Cricket P&R's & T&W Metro Replacements. I certainly agree with what another member said on here a few days ago in that Go North East should be focusing on there commercial operations and working within there means rather than taking on excessive amounts of contracts that results in service cancellation to facilitate the latter to operate as a priority at the paying customers expense.

To play devils advocate though, and as I've said previously on here, the contract work is guaranteed income for any operator. Commercial work isn't, and it'd be a really dangerous move financially to abandon the contract work side of things.

Like it or not, but commercial services have a higher risk factor, as they can end up running around all day carrying fresh air. That's not to say I agree with the deregulated market - far from it - but that's the reality we have in the current system.

In an ideal world under the current system, operators would all maintain a good balance of commercial and contract work, but the latter is becoming more and more competitive to win, because public sector procurement is essentially a race to the bottom. GNE have always ran for contract work, and really it's only even being raised as an issue because of the driver shortage and commercial work going uncovered. Again, that's the nature of the beast, and it'll come down to penalties for non-operation of contract work vs nothing for non-operation of commercial work. We'd see a different attitude if there was a universal system like delay repay in place, but there's another fault in the current system...