Lead Councillor reminds Welsh Government who made local historic bus funding cut decision

A senior councillor has reminded the Welsh Labour Government of a decision over bus funding made locally several years ago, when Labour were in charge of Wrexham Council too.

On Monday we wrote how the Welsh Government announced a £25m pot of money to ‘help ensure a sustainable bus service’ in Wrexham. However Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for transport and environment was not impressed and called it ‘regurgitated’ and a 20% real term cut since 2012.

On Wednesday Economy Secretary Ken Skates said Cllr Bithell was being ‘disingenuous’, and that: “The National Transport Finance Plan says that Local Authorities should match the Welsh Government support made available through the Bus Services Support Grant with their own funding.

“Wrexham Council currently provide no additional match funding support.

“It is disingenuous of the lead member for transport of Wrexham Council to criticise the funding Welsh Government puts into bus services in the County Borough when they refuse to provide equivalent funding of their own.”

Since that article Cllr Bithell, part of the Independent / Conservative administration currently running Wrexham Council, got back in touch to point out that “in December 2013 the Labour led administration at Wrexham Council removed £495,000 from subsidised bus services.

“This has led to some of the issues experienced together with the demise of two local bus operators.”

He added: “We will continue to work with the Welsh Government to find solutions to the problems.”

At the time the decision referenced was made Wrexham Council was controlled by Labour, with Councillor Neil Rogers the then Leader of the Council.

Labour’s Councillor Malcolm King was the then Lead Member for Policy, Finance Performance and Governance and presented a report that contained the following budget line:

The minutes note “Confirmation that the proposed savings identified in respect of subsidised bus services was only the Wrexham County Borough Council element. The Lead Member reported that discussions with commercial bus companies were ongoing to attempt to clarify what the potential impact may be of the reduced service.”

The Leader of the Wrexham Plaid Cymru group also picked up on the exchange between the Lead Member and the Economy Secretary, with Councillor Marc Jones saying: “Bus services in Wrexham are falling off a cliff due to real-time cuts to funding for subsidised services and Arriva’s monopoly on local routes.

“Since the much-heralded ‘bus summit’ in March 2017 by the economy secretary, things have actually got much worse not better. Building shiny new transport hubs won’t hide the fact that there aren’t the buses to operate from them.

“And blowing £1,000,000 on free transport at weekends to Barmouth and similar routes in a gimmicky year-long pilot doesn’t make equal a transport strategy.”

“It’s time we had some joined-up thinking on public transport and brought rail and buses back under public ownership in Wales. That’s the norm in Europe – and London – where bus use is rising not falling.”