Following our article last week on the BBC’s report about volunteer bus drivers taking on local bus services, Marc Morgan-Huws of Southern Vectis has been in touch.
The article raised many comments and questions about the volunteer drivers, so Marc has helpfully filled in some gaps. In his own words, Ed
Wightbus services
These services are currently paid for by IW Council subsidy. They are operated by the Council itself, not by Southern Vectis.
When IW council announced they were being withdrawn, we were contacted by a number of Parish councils to ask for our advice on community run buses.
Advice to Parish councils
We offered them the following …
To give them the buses between schools, to let them decide the routes, and to find the volunteer drivers.
We have also said we’ll do all the training ourselves at our cost.
Running costs covered by fares
The other running costs should be covered by the fares taken (or the OAP concessionary fare repayments). The ‘grant’ from IWC is not all coming to us, and is not a grant to us.
On each of the four schemes that we are involved with the Council is making a fixed payment of £12.5k per annum to cover the concessionary fares payment.
This will be used to offset the running costs – wear and tear, fuel, tyres and insurance. It is just one third of the £150,000 mentioned. We are funding the training ourselves, not the Council.
Some fares kept by community schemes
Any cash fares taken are for the community schemes to keep themselves to reinvest in additional services if they want to expand them.
No redundancies
No Wightbus drivers are being made redundant or having their hours cut.
They are all transferring to Southern Vectis on their current terms and conditions, as I confirmed to them at a staff meeting last week.
These four services are a very small element of the current Wightbus work.
Positive responses from Parish councils
The Parish councils concerned have been 100% positive about the schemes, and so have the 60 or so Islanders who volunteered to drive for these schemes.
RMT members support the move
Around half of our staff are indeed members of the RMT, and the local RMT branch supports this scheme.
It does not impinge on the work of our existing staff at all.
Indeed, while all this is happening we continue to recruit for our growing business.
Growth of Southern Vectis
When Go Ahead bought Southern Vectis we employed around 115 drivers.
Today, prior to the Wightbus transfer, and excluding any volunteers, we employ over 200 Island residents driving our buses and coaches.
