£400m Taxpayers Bill If Plans To Nationalise Bus Services Approved

Scotland's billionaire brothers the Easdales have slated the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) for its attempts to nationalise bus services in Glasgow, in plans backed by the SNP.

Plans to nationalise buses in Glasgow could cost taxpayers £400m a year, it has been claimed. SNP and Scottish Greens councillors in the city have backed proposals for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) to take the bus service in the region back into public ownership.

However, this has received a negative response from private operators, including McGills who run services between the city and neighbouring regions. And the company's owners, the billionaire Easdale brothers, have claimed that SPT have been publicising the wrong figures for how much the project would cost.

On March 15, the arms-length council partnership, announced plans to start on franchising the buses using newly activated powers in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019. It commissioned global transport consultants Systra to conduct a scoping study that examined the current bus networks in Strathclyde and claimed that the cost to the taxpayer would be £45m to £80m a year.

This would need to be paid by either the Scottish Government or councils, but Humza Yousaf has insisted that he will not be paying for it. However, McGill's have said that its own analysis estimated that it would actually cost the public purse £400m a year, with £8m needed to paint all the buses the same colour.

The Easdales compared the potential expense to the ferry fiasco as they demanded that SPT come clean about the true cost of its proposals.

Sandy Easdale said: “We now have the figures to show that this plan would cost the taxpayer £400m a year as opposed to the £85m that SPT is claiming. This is another ferry debacle in the making but is many times bigger.”

McGill's CEO Ralph Roberts claimed that "the more you dig into SPT’s franchising wish list, the more you see the iceberg below what they are revealing."

He added: "At a high level they predict that the franchised network would deliver up to an additional 40m bus journeys per annum and would cost up to £85m per annum so that would cost a straightforward £2 per ride. This is broadly in line with current costs so no huge surprise.

“However, when you realise that the franchising wish list beyond the additional buses is going to cost significantly more money, you must then adjust the cost base of the entire operation.

"The SPT wish list beyond more services includes things like a more efficient network, better punctuality and reliability, increased affordability (lower fares), sustainability and environmental improvements, buses available when people want them and where people want them, a common network identity, integrated ticketing, fares capping region-wide, improved safety and security, better public acceptability and a common customer charter.

"For example, increasing the efficiency of the network involves spending on infrastructure to the tune of £1.5billion over the whole of Strathclyde, £500m of which is in the Glasgow area alone. To increase the affordability of the network – i.e. reduce fares – it costs more again and on it goes. The fares reduction alone would be in the order of £150m to £200m in cost per annum.

“Painting buses to all be the same colour would be an £8 million cost for example. Totting up all of the qualitative costs on top of the network expansion, plus the amortisation of the huge one-off costs, means that a £400m additional cost per annum is actually a conservative estimate."

An SPT spokeswoman said: “The Strathclyde Regional Bus Strategy (SRBS) Case for Change unequivocally highlighted a need for reform to stem the sustained decline in the bus market.

“A public consultation on SPT’s recommended bus reform options, including franchising, as set out in the Transport (Scotland) Act 2019, is currently open.

"SPT encourages everyone with an interest in the future of bus to participate in this important consultation.

"The deadline for responding is midnight on Monday 31 May, you can access the consultation via the SPT website.”