Exclusive: Mayor says nationalising Derbyshire buses wouldn’t work – and hopes enhanced partnership will improve services

Claire Ward, the Mayor of the East Midlands, has announced a new enhanced bus partnership covering Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Derby and Nottingham.

The new venture is bringing together four separate local bus partnerships to help improve bus services across the East Midlands region.

This comes after Stagecoach introduced a number of changes to bus services in Chesterfield and surrounding areas, which are set to come in place on October 25.

The changes have raised concerns among local councillors and residents with many calling for buses to be brought under the public ownership.

Staveley Cllr Paul Mann has praised the franchise Bee Network in Greater Manchester and suggested Derbyshire should follow suit.

The Derbyshire Times met with The East Midlands Mayor to discuss the future of the bus services across Derbyshire and ask about the potential for a bus franchise in the county.

Mayor Claire said: "Most people think public transport is run by public services but 88% of bus miles in our region are run commercially.

"12% are socially necessary local services where we will fund a service to run.

"What they did in Manchester is they took all bus services and said they would no longer allow them to run commercially.

"But because of the nature of our region franchising would not work as well here.

"If you think about about the East Midlands region we have two cities Derby and Nottingham – but they are relatively small.

"We have lots of towns, rural areas and local communities.

"The nature of our region is different to Manchester, which is a big city.”

With franchising not as viable as in the Greater Manchester area, Mayor Claire has pledged to find an alternative way to improve bus services in the East Midlands including Derbyshire.

The Mayor has been working with 17 bus providers to launch a one of its kind enhanced bus partnership covering two counties – Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

She said: “We are creating a regional enhanced bus partnership.

“There were four separate partnerships before and we brought them all together.

"We are the only place in the country to do this.

"I don’t want to completely rule out a franchise in the future but I want to make this work because of the nature of our region.

"I want to work with the bus companies so we can improve how our services run.”

While the new enhanced partnership cannot prevent the bus companies from cancelling the services they deem unviable, Mayor Claire Ward explained how the new framework would help to support communities in the future.

She said: “What we have seen over this summer unfortunately is bus routes being changed or cancelled with not much notice.

"In some cases bus providers went out of service and sometimes they decided routes were not viable for them.

"But the buses are often a lifeline for people to get to work, school or college.

“With the enhanced partnership I can’t prevent bus companies from cancelling routes.

"But I expect the bus companies to give me more notice before changes so we can respond in time.

"If a bus route is cancelled, we can work with other bus companies to find solutions.”

Explaining when the Combined East Midlands Authority can step in to save bus routes, Mayor Claire said: “If a bus company decided a bus service was no longer viable, we would look at the route and we would determine whether it was a socially necessary route.

"We recognise that we are not going to make a profit on socially necessary routes.

"But if you have three people using a given bus in a day we have to ask is it sensible to spend public money on running it?”

Speaking on the future of bus services she added: “The most important message for residents is use the buses we have. Use the services or lose them,

"The more we use the buses, the more they become viable.

“I want more people to use the public transport if they can.”