Bus contracts

THE COUNCIL’s head of transport has reassured islanders that changes to the way school and public bus contracts are handled will not open the door for a monopoly.

Answering questions from audit and standards committee vice chairman Allison (Flea) Duncan, Michael Craigie said the council wanted to encourage smaller operators to work more efficiently.

“What we intend to do is issue several smaller contracts at the same time as an opportunity to bring down cost. Operators could bulk together contracts in a more intelligent way, and do the same work with less capital input,” he said.

Mr Craigie added that other local authorities had been able achieve savings of between 10 and 50 per cent depending on how well transport operators responded to the challenge.