£3.5 million to assess a proposed bus franchising scheme. The legal notice, officially signed by Mayor David Skaith, marks a definitive move toward stripping private operators of unregulated control over local routes.
“Not Working for Residents”
The proposed franchising model would allow the Combined Authority to set fares, determine local timetables, and dictate route maps, effectively reversing the deregulation of the 1980s. Mayor Skaith launched a direct attack on the current commercial setup, stating that private transport companies are failing rural and urban communities alike.
Mayor David Skaith said:
Bus services across York and North Yorkshire just aren’t working for our residents. Too many people are cut off from training, jobs, leisure and being able to get where they need to go. We need to move away from a system that allows private operators to extract profit from our region, so we can reinvest that to support more services.
Rural Pilot Findings Looming
The multimillion-pound assessment will investigate whether a publicly controlled network can deliver sustainable connections across England’s largest rural county. The timeline is highly compressed; the decision was fast-tracked to ensure the authority can react immediately to the findings of a Department for Transport-funded Rural Bus Franchising Pilot Study, which is due at the end of October 2026.
The scheme builds directly upon the region’s existing Bus Service Improvement Plan (BSIP). The upcoming formal assessment will detail the long-term structural, financial, and legal implications of buying out or replacing private network operators before any final cabinet vote is cast to implement franchising across the district.