The Greater Cambridge Partnership (GCP) plans rely on a massive bus expansion for their proposal. However, as everyone knows, there is a massive shortage of bus drivers. Specifically, a lack of Passenger-Carrying Vehicle (PCV) licensed drivers to drive vehicles with over 16 seats. The PCV is the new name for the Public Service Vehicle (PSV) licence.

If you want to get paid to use your PCV licence, you also need a Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC).

So, with a national shortage of drivers, what to do? You have to train and recruit more drivers. Bus companies will train drivers, in exchange for a contracted period of employment. The GCP is also offering to train drivers as part of their remit too. Which is nice.

Below is a transcript of Elisa Meschini from the Cambridge 105 breakfast show. Elisa is addressing the issue of drivers. The GCP has the solution; it would appear. The thing that will keep the GCP’s plans afloat.

If I mean at the moment Stagecoach have been not recruiting people with the level of benefits with the pay that they deserve in our scheme, we would budget for a 20% rise in pay for bus drivers so that they no longer are attracted to go and drive lorries or Amazon vans for considerably better money. 

We would give them benefits we would give them pensions.
We would give them proper contracts.

{Question from the presenter over who wold run the bus services}

So that's where the mayor comes in. You see the mayor of the combined authority because he has the power to franchise the buses.
So if he decided which I know he is in favour of, to franchise the routes we could run it like in London.
So you would have you would go out to tender. You would have multiple companies taking up the contracts that the mayor decides.

And you would have a healthy system where you don't have a monopoly, and therefore even if the buses are all red and all, say Transport for London.

They actually are run by a number of people that can cover for each other and you have a stable system and if one operator has a problem it doesn't all come crashing down.

Apart from the actual issue of being able to do this legally, in the real world, there are several takeaway comments from this small exchange.

Stagecoach have been not recruiting people with the level of benefits with the pay that they deserve in our scheme

Elisa Meschini says that Stagecoach appears to be underpaying their drivers, perhaps up to 20% below the market rate. Stagecoach may wish to raise this is Elisa and the GCP.

The Zone muses if Elisa has any idea of how PAYE works in the UK. Paying an employee, for example, £28,000 annually costs the employer closer to £31,250. The employer has to pay, roughly, an additional 12% on top of any headline salary for employer side contributions.

Is this a 20% increase in take-home pay or before tax?
Is this a 20% increase in gross pay?
Does this 20% include the employer side contributions?

We would give them benefits we would give them pensions.
We would give them proper contracts.

The GCP cannot give the drivers benefits.

The GCP cannot give the drivers pensions.
An employer must, by law, automatically enrol an employee into a pension scheme and make contributions to their pension. The employee may opt out, of course. So here the GCP is offering to provide a right to a driver already there by law? Unless, of course, the GCP will stipulate that you, the public, will subsidise a different pension scheme too?

The GCP cannot give the drivers proper contracts.
The Zone muses what type of contact a driver has to be legally driving a bus full of people. Perhaps drivers appear to take the Citi 2 for a spin as and when they feel like it.

Why can’t the GCP or CPCA do this? The GCP isn’t a bus company. Nor is the CPCA able to be a bus company. The GCP nor the CPCA actually employ the drivers. So who, then, will be offering these benefits?

Elisa has the answer…

So that's where the mayor comes in. You see the mayor of the combined authority because he has the power to franchise the buses.
So if he decided which I know he is in favour of, to franchise the routes we could run it like in London.
So you would have you would go out to tender. You would have multiple companies taking up the contracts that the mayor decides.

The Mayor, or the CPCA, can, as part of the tender for a franchised route, stipulate specific terms and conditions those bidding for the route have to accept. However, the GCP has no control over who bids for the routes. Some may well, as happens in London, have only one company bidding for a given route. Some may have none, which would be a problem.

If the franchise tender terms and conditions stipulate these benefits above, who do they apply to? Do they apply to the drivers operating the GCP routes or all the companies’ drivers? For example, bus companies offer many services, such as rail replacement. Would it also apply to those drivers?

It is a fantasy to assume that the GCP can stipulate specific conditions for the drivers who work on the GCP routes. It would appear also to be discriminatory and in breach of Equal Pay legislation. Unless the GCP proposes reforming the pay structure, benefits, pensions, and working conditions of every company that bids on their routes across the region? Is this a Labour party policy being written into contracts by the GCP, paid for by you, the people, of Cambridge?

They actually are run by a number of people that can cover for each other and you have a stable system and if one operator has a problem it doesn't all come crashing down.

Here Elisa Meschini appears to have been living in some other utopian world. Does Elisa believe that Company A, which bid and won a route, would provide cover for a way they potentially bid on but didn’t win for free? If this were written into the contracts for any given route, then the spare staff and bus capacity costs would need to be paid for. This extra capacity would be costed and paid for by you, the people.

The requirement for bus companies to cover each other does not appear on the TfL details of tendering requirements for the London franchised service. Perhaps Elisa would like to provide a reference for where this happens.

Running a franchise operation is a considerable amount of administration. Any franchise requires very active management. Franchises are complex things. The GCP has provided no costs for this, nothing. So this is another item the STZ will have to fund, although no one knows how much it will be. It would appear that to run a franchise, it will mean the STZ charge will go up or the hours extended to cover this additional cost.