Following enquiries made by Monk Hesleden Parish Council on behalf of residents I have received the following information from the section manager of network planning at the county council:
The 206 bus service has been run on a wholly
subsidised basis, operated by Go
North East (GoNE).
When the county council put the service contracts out to tender last summer, for operation from 27th Oct 2012, GoNE took on the main
part of the network without any subsidy. Only the Saturday journeys
and the later afternoon and early evening journeys still ran under a subsidy contract with the county council.
The changes
subsequently made by Arriva to improve their commercial network in east Durham from 27 October 2012 have taken passengers away from some of the GoNE services and this has had an impact on their viability. By way of example, passenger numbers on the 206 service have fallen considerably because there are now two Arriva buses
per hour between Station Town, Wingate and Peterlee (services 21 and
21A) instead of just one and there are now four Arriva
buses per hour between Peterlee, Blackhall and Hartlepool (as opposed to three previously).
GoNE's partially subsidised services in the Easington Colliery and Horden area have also been affected,
where quite a number of passengers have begun to use Arriva's new services in this area. This meant that GoNE had to take urgent action to stem the resulting losses.
The DCC budget for subsidising bus
services is already fully stretched and is unable to support an unchanged network of GoNE's services. To maintain costs in line with what the council can afford, the services in Easington Colliery and
Horden have been reduced. This means that extra subsidy can be
allocated to the 206 service. However it is still not possible to avoid a reduction
in its frequency.
Whilst the above information gives some kind of explanation, the situation with the bus companies is far from acceptable. Since deregulation in 1987 bus company services and routes which failed to make a profit have not been sustained and GoNE considers that the villages of Hesleden, Castle Eden and Hutton Henry do not generate sufficient passengers to support an hourly 206 bus service.
To make matters worse, the drastic reduction in central government funding to local authorities means that councils constantly struggle to subsidise unprofitable services, which in turn has an adverse impact on passengers when bus companies pull the plug.
I intend to maintain contact with the company and local authorities to ensure as far as possible that the reduction in the 206 service has a minimal impact on our communities.
