THE North East is in a “race against time” to seize control of the region’s buses.

Leaders are pushing the Department for Transport (DfT) to include provisions in Labour’s new Better Buses Bill that would give the North East Combined Authority (NECA) the ability to deliver mayor Kim McGuinness’ promise to take power over bus fares, routes, and timetables away from private operators more quickly.

One of the mayor’s key manifesto pledges was to create an ‘Angel Network’ of publicly controlled buses by the end of her first term, reversing the deregulation of the 1980s which put services into the hands of private companies.

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While NECA officials are pressing ahead with the ambition, there is doubt over whether a bus franchising model – in which NECA would issue contracts to operators to run services – can be put in place by 2028 under current regulations.

Ms McGuinness told a Centre for Cities Q&A session at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool that it would be a “race against time” to deliver the pledge and later confirmed that she wants the DfT change its rules so that contracts can be issued more quickly.

The Labour mayor said she wants the power to issue short-term contracts to the region’s existing bus operators as soon as the final decision is taken to proceed with a franchise model – to allow the Angel Network to be set up immediately, while a competitive tender process is being run for longer-term deals.

Ms McGuinness told the Centre for Cities event: “In rural County Durham and Northumberland we have had 30 and 40 per cent cuts to bus services and that percentage is increasing. We have to do something.”

She added: “I do feel like we are in a race against time. We need these buses to improve and we have to keep doing the work in the background to improve the services that we already have – to keep investing, to look at integrated ticketing and live tracking, and safety on public transport.

“But we need the Better Buses Bill that is being developed at the moment. There are things in that to speed up the process and we know that this is the direction of travel in this country, to have more control over buses.”

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service at the Museum of Liverpool afterwards, she added that the franchising process is currently “cumbersome and quite lengthy” – having taken Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham six years to launch his Bee Network.

The North East Combined Authority (NECA) estimated in July that it would take two years and eight months to go through the “complex” legal requirements.

Ms McGuinness said:  “It is important that we take the time to consult properly and understand what people want from the routes, the fares, the public transport that is so important to them.

“But there are definitely things they can do to speed it up. One of the key things we are asking for is the ability to make a ‘direct award’ once we get through the consultation.

“It is quite technical, but what it means is that once we get to the point where we decide to go ahead with franchising, we can work with the existing companies so that they take the contracts while we go through a procurement process.

“We would still go through the tender, to open competition – we would still do all of that and that is really important. But it would allow us to take control of those buses quicker.”

Transport secretary Louise Haigh recently announced new legislation that will give all local transport authorities across England the power to run their own bus services – and, crucially for the North East, promised to “break down barriers to local control of bus services, speeding up the process and bringing down costs”.

She told the Labour conference on Monday: “For decades private operators have been allowed to pick and choose routes and services that put profit ahead of passengers, with no control for communities.

“Last year, I stood in front of you and promised we would extend powers so that every area of the country run their bus services just like London has done for decades. Building on the brilliant work of our mayors across the country that’s exactly what we have done. Within weeks of being elected, our Labour government has brought forward legislation to bring our buses back under public control.

“And we’ll go further still. And we will overturn the ideological Tory ban on public ownership of bus companies. A public transport system that is for the public.”