Last week First Potteries, the company operating
public transport in Stoke-on-Trent, told its drivers, many of whom had worked throughout
lockdown, that their contracts are to be changed.
First Potteries claim the changes are due to fewer
passengers being likely to use busses as the country emerges from the pandemic
and are necessary to ‘secure a sustainable business and protect jobs’.
The changes could see drivers lose part of their
holiday entitlement and their right to a free lift home after a night shift,
they will also have to take a 90-minute unpaid break during every shift.
First Potteries managing director Nigel Eggleton told
the Sentinel “As we move out of the
restrictions imposed by the pandemic, we like many other businesses are looking
towards the future and ensuring we have a sustainable business that can secure
jobs and continue to deliver a network of bus services to people in the Potteries”
[1].
Drivers for First Potteries are represented by
the UNITE trades union and Regional Organiser Stephen Blakemore told the
Sentinel they were “currently engaged in constructive dialogue” with the
company and were “confident that we can get a resolution that works for our
members, the company and for the people of Stoke-on-Trent (our passengers)”.
Far be it from me to cast a bad spell over the
negotiations at this early stage, but my experience of having any kind of ‘dialogue’
with First Potteries has seldom been anything like ‘constructive’.
Public transport in Stoke-on-Trent is, as
anyone who has tried to use it will attest, a bad joke. This has very little to
do with the impact of the pandemic, it was a shambles before Covid arrived; and
everything to with decades of underinvestment.
I find myself in the unlikely position of
agreeing with Stoke South MP Jack Brereton when he says, as he did in
parliament in January 2020 “bus services are too few, too slow and too
infrequent [2]”.
The
debate maunders on from there with contributions from Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme),
Karen Bradley (Staffs Moorlands) and Jo Gideon (Stoke Central) among others.
Grand plans to link busses and trains, convert the busses to electric power and
revamp Stoke Station to rival Grand Central in New York are floated in almost
every intervention.
This
is rounded off by a cheery, if lengthy, homily from Parliamentary
Undersecretary of State for Transport Nusrat Ghani, about busses Ms Ghani says “we
are all agreed that bus services matter. They are the best way for people to
travel, being the cleanest and the cheapest, whether for getting to work or for
accessing social services. We are all agreed that buses are our most vital form
of public transport system”.
She
might want to check that last statement, I am certain that quite a few of her
fellow Tories have never been on a bus in their lives, Jacob Rees-Mogg running
for the number 22 to Hanley is something I would pay to see.
Leaving
stereotypes aside the real flaw in this debate and most of the conversations
about public transport in Stoke-on-Trent held in parliament or the council
chamber is that elected representatives have their heads in the clouds.
Meanwhile First Potteries are down in the pantry paring the cheese for all they
are worth.
In
this instance they have decided that the pandemic is a crisis too good to waste
since it allows them to engage in their favourite hobby of cutting things.
Services have been cut to the bone, a process that began long before March last
year, so staff terms and conditions are in the frame.
I am
not sure which is worse, the predictability or the crushing myopia, either way
it is a disaster for the environment and the economy of the city. Stoke is a
city plagued by poor air quality, getting traffic off the roads is the best way
of improving things, cutting congestion would also make the city more
attractive to outside investors.
If I
and pretty much anyone standing at their local bus stop can see that; why can’t
First Potteries? Because nobody pushes them to do so, the city council and the
MPs are too busy building castles in the air.
Building
a decent, affordable, and modern transport system is fundamental to making
Stoke-on-Trent into a city with vibrant economy and addressing its deep-seated
social problems. To do so First need to park their outdated business practices
and our elected representatives need to roll up the grand plans and focus
instead on unexciting, but vital realities.
A twenty-first
century public transport system is one that engages all its stakeholders
equally. The council must be more than a cash cow to be ignored when it fails
to fill the provider’s pail with enough in the way of subsidies and passengers
must be engaged with meaningfully, ideally by giving them a stake in owning the
network through something like a cooperative society.
Treating
the drivers and other staff who keep the network running must be an integral
part of this, if they are dissatisfied and demotivated neither this nor the
grand plans debated in parliament will get off the ground. More to the point we
the people who use busses in this city will be left standing at the stop for
even longer.
[1]https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/news/stoke-on-trent-news/bus-drivers-face-losing-one-5460335
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