What future for bus franchising after Tyne and Wear QC judgment?

The Quality Contract Scheme board’s highly critical assessment of Nexus’s plan to introduce bus Quality Contracts in Tyne and Wear may have implications for bus franchising plans elsewhere too.

Andrew Forster

13 November 2015

QCS?board chair Kevin Rooney: negative impacts of QCs on bus operators “wholly disproportionate”

Nexus boss Tobyn Hughes: board took a “surprising view of financial risks”

Bus operators lack friends in the political class right now, with the Conservatives and Labour both championing the idea of franchising. Yet, when the chips are down, the operators still have considerable powers of persuasion in legal and quasi-legal circles, as demonstrated in last week’s conclusions of the Quality Contract Scheme board, set up to assess plans for a bus Quality Contract Scheme in Tyne and Wear.

The board, chaired by North East traffic commissioner Kevin Rooney, has...