51²è¹Ý

IN THE EAST OF ENGLAND TRAFFIC AREA

PUBLIC INQUIRY, CAMBRIDGE, 26 JUNE 2025

OPERATOR: SULLIVAN BUSES ENGINEERING LTD LICENCE PF1144361

DECISION OF THE DEPUTY TRAFFIC COMMISSIONER

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Under Section 155 of the Transport Act 2000 (as amended) a traffic commissioner can impose a penalty on the operator where it has failed (without reasonable excuse) to operate a local service under section 6 of the Act. Paragraph 67 of the STC’s guidance document No. 14 sets out suggested levels of penalty for various degrees of non-compliance. Where timetable compliance is under 80% a starting point of between £400 and £550 penalty per authorised vehicle is suggested. Traffic commissioners must also follow the principle of proportionality when considering the amount of penalty (if any) to impose, taking care to ensure that the amount of the penalty reflects the scale of the failure.

The public inquiry held in Cambridge on 26 June 2025 found that Sullivan Buses has only achieved a 65% or so compliance rate over seven days of monitoring by DVSA of three of its bus routes during October and November 2024. An updated report presented by the operator (based in its Ticketer data) covering one of the three routes over the period 1 February to 23 May 2025 showed that the compliance rate remained broadly the same.

The company, represented by James Backhouse of Backhouse Jones, presented some cogent arguments as to why it was impossible to achieve anything like the 95% compliance rate expected by the Senior Traffic Commissioner or indeed the 90% level aimed for under the Quality Partnership with Hertfordshire County Council. Primary amongst these was the extreme variability in traffic conditions (and therefore timetable punctuality) caused by the routes’ proximity to the M25, A1(M) and related bottleneck junctions. The length of the 306 Watford to Borehamwood route in particular meant that it was extremely difficult to make up time once lost.

In the main, I had much sympathy for the operational challenges faced by the company in this environment. However, I noted from the report of DVSA traffic examiner Tori Duggan that the operator’s response to a significant number of complaints about the late or non-running of one service was to the effect that three of the vehicles dedicated to that service had been off the road since September 2024 as the result of collisions caused by third parties.

I noted that the operator was continuing to use this explanation in May 2025, some eight months after the vehicles had first been taken off the road. I asked the operator about this and was told that it had initially hoped that the vehicles could be returned to service fairly quickly but subsequently found that it was difficult to obtain some of the parts needed (for elderly models no longer in production). The operator accepted that, with hindsight, it should have managed things differently, such as bringing in hired vehicles on a temporary basis. Instead it had chosen to invest its money in engineering resource to effect the necessary repairs. One of the vehicles remained out of service: the other two had been put back into service around six weeks ago.    

I recognise that the operator could not have predicted how long returning the three vehicles to service would take. However, I consider that it should have realised much earlier on that repair was not going to be quick and that it should have taken action to plug the gap, either by bringing in vehicles on a temporary basis or amending the timetable to reflect the reduced number of vehicles at its disposal. It did neither: the result was that passengers were left with a substandard service whose causes were nothing to do with the vagaries of the local traffic conditions but rather within the operator’s control.

Taking this into account, and weighing up the interests of both operator and passengers, I have decided that a financial penalty of £40 per vehicle authorised is appropriate in this case. This is far below the maximum £550 suggested by the STC’s guidelines for compliance levels of under 80%, mainly because I have accepted the operator’s argument about the impossibility, given local conditions and the nature of the routes, of achieving anywhere near the 95% level. But the operator has been at fault in tolerating for far too long a period a situation in which three vehicles were unavailable, without taking measures to alleviate the situation for passengers on the route affected. 

Sullivan Buses Engineering Ltd is currently authorised for 25 vehicles, thus giving a total penalty of £1,000 (£40 x 25). 

Compensation to passengers

Paragraph 65 of the STC’s Statutory Guidance Document No 14 states that where passengers have suffered sustained poor performance and where an operator is failing to take prompt and appropriate remedial action it may be beneficial to order compensation to passengers. I consider that these criteria have been met in the case of the Watford to Borehamwood service 306. Section 155 (1C) of the Transport Act 2000 states that such compensation may take the form of free or reduced price travel for passengers. I intend to make a specific direction along these lines but before I do so I will discuss with the operator how the £1,000 penalty imposed may be best and most equitably returned to users of service 306.

Future punctuality data

The operator considered that punctuality should now improve somewhat (albeit not to 90% levels), following the completion of roadworks on the M25 which had caused unpredictable tailbacks and rat-running affecting some of its routes. It offered to provide data covering the six month period 1 July 2025 to 31 December 2025 by the end of January 2026. I have accepted this offer, which will be added to the licence as a formal undertaking. I expect the data to demonstrate the promised measurable improvement in punctuality.

Nick Denton

Deputy Traffic Commissioner

2 July 2025