INDEPENDENT INQUIRY ABOUT THE SAFETY OF THE LONDON CONTRACTED BUS MARKET MODEL

Our ref: HSR/2/20

Head Office Circular: NP/67/24

14th March 2024

To: The Secretary

ALL BRANCHES

REGIONAL COUNCILS

 

Dear Colleague,

 

INDEPENDENT INQUIRY ABOUT THE SAFETY OF THE LONDON CONTRACTED BUS MARKET MODEL

 

Your National Bus Workers Industrial Organising Conference carried the following resolution:

 

That this RMT National Bus Workers Industrial Organising Conference calls upon the RMT N.E.C. to support and campaign for an independent inquiry about the safety of the London Contracted Bus Market Model that is being adopted by other UK cities. 

 

This Conference notes that, while London's Contracted Bus Market Model is being adopted by other cities and regions throughout the UK, the London Assembly and independent campaigners have published well-evidenced reports showing that TfL's contracted bus operation is as described by a former TfL board member and safety panel chair in evidence submitted to the London Assembly in 2020, "Institutionally unsafe". 

 

Over the 5-year period from 2016-2021, from collisions involving a TfL bus, an average of two people per day have been sent to hospital and one person has been killed every four to six weeks - an egregious bus safety performance record that places London in the lowest quartile for bus safety performance when independently benchmarked to its world city peers. 

 

Added to this appalling bus safety performance record is the fact that during the COVID pandemic, drivers died at twice the rate as expected based on age, ethnicity and home post code. 

 

Based on the London Model's well evidenced poor safety performance record, this conference calls upon the RMT N.E.C. to ask the House of Commons to launch an independent Inquiry of the systematic safety problems associated with TfL's Contracted Bus Market Model.

 

At its meeting on your National Executive Committee agreed as follows:

 

That we note the resolution of our National Bus Workers Industrial Organising Conference. 

 

We further note the appalling safety record of private bus operations masquerading under the banner of public bodies such as TFL and other local authorities. 

 

Our policy remains as our being committed to being the pursuit of nothing less than full public ownership and operation of all bus services within the United Kingdom. 

 

We instruct the General Secretary to take this matter up in in line with the resolution, and to place a story about this matter in a forthcoming edition of RMT news. 

I am acting in line with these instructions.

 

Please bring this circular to the attention of all relevant members.

 

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Michael Lynch

General Secretary