A NATIONAL bus firm must now wait more than a week to discover their fate after a public inquiry into services across Essex took place.
Bosses of First Essex gathered at the Traffic Commissioner's offices in Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge yesterday (June 30) to be grilled over complaints of poor and unreliable services during the one-day hearing.
But the company, which has 461 vehicles operating across the county, must now wait until July 10 to find out whether it will hold onto its licence, or pay a financial penalty after Deputy Traffic Commissioner Marcia Davis reserved her final decision for another day.
It was revealed during the inquiry that in a sample size of 327 services checked by the Vehicles and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) in April and May 2013 79 buses, or 24 per cent, had been more than a minute early, more than five minutes late or had failed to appear at all.
However lawyer for the national company, James Backhouse, said that early arrivals had later been deducted from this total to give the firm a punctuality percentage of 83 per cent overall.
"You can't assume that 95 per cent is achievable across all services. It's very much network and service specific," he told the inquiry.
But deputy commissioner Ms Davis presiding made clear she would analyse in detail the evidence and procedures in place to determine whether the firm had a reasonable excuse for its failures.
"They key thing for the use of public transport by the general public is its reliability. The bottom line is how reliable, how punctual is that bus at coming to particular stops when required to do so. That is the key thing for the public," she said.
