How do you reimburse the bus companies for the journeys we make?

We do not rely solely upon the bus company's records for calculating how much to reimburse them. In fact the reimbursement calculations are made by one company acting on behalf of all Councils in Sussex, including Brighton and Hove City Council. The company specialises in bus transport and has teams of inspectors who carry out periodic surveys on bus routes and interview passengers about their journey details. The inspectors know from their work and inspection of bus company records that there is a degree of unreliability.

Calculating the amount to pay bus operators is a fairly complex task. The basis for reimbursement is set out in legislation which also includes an appeals process to the Department for Transport when an operator remains dissatisfied with the amount that has been offered. The amounts that Councils seek to reimburse operators are not always seen by operators as adequate enough.
A couple of examples illustrate that the process is not straightforward:

• If a new pass is issued to someone who has never used buses before, the amount paid to the operator will be less than 15 pence per mile for the trips made. This is intended to cover just the additional costs of carrying that extra passenger
• If there were so many new passengers that the bus company had to buy another bus then the cost of that bus and extra drivers could be claimed by the bus operator as well. We would expect operators to maximise the use of their fleet before such a claim would be made
• If someone turns 60 or becomes eligible for a pass and previously paid to travel by bus then we have to reimburse the operator for the amounts they would have previously paid and the lower amount mentioned above for any additional journeys and extra journey lengths

The objective at the end of the day is to reimburse operators so that they are ‘neither better nor worse off’ as a result of the existence of concessionary travel schemes.  This is a concept with which everyone can agree, but which in practice is not so easy to quantify.

This is a very simple description of what is a complex process to determine reimbursements. If you would like to delve into the technicalities of reimbursement the Department for Transport has published guidance on its website at: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/regional/buses/concessionary/informationlocalauthorities/reimbursementappeals/