06 March 2012

DfT Under-spend

Peter Shipp, chairman of East Yorkshire Motor Services Group, writes:

Just yesterday I read in the bus industry trade press that the DfT underspent in 2010/11 to the extent that it was required to hand back to the Treasury no less than £543million.

This was after making the savings required of the Department in the first place and the Transport Select Committee, in its report published last week, has said that this is likely to have exceeded the total reduction in the money paid to the bus industry following the Spending Review.

In other words it seems that these very damaging cuts in payments to bus operators need not have been made. I believe that bus passengers who are losing their bus services and are seeing big fare rises, or will to do so very soon, have every right to be extremely angry to find out that these could have been avoided.

The Committee notes that the DfT accepted a budget cut of £683million and then under-spent on its revised budget by over £1billion, calling into question whether the in-year cut was necessary.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What ever happens or what ever is done I do not think Peter Shipp will ever be happy.

G. Tingey said...

DafT are completely "unfit for purpose"
The horribly expensive fiasco over IeP has shown this, and their tw-faced behaviour over "Oyster" extension (see current issue of "Modern Railways") only reinforces the message.