CORNWALL Council and bus company Go Cornwall have been accused of “colluding” to mislead the public over the reason why a bus service in Fowey was re-routed to much anger in the town.
It was originally stated – and reported by us last year – that the No 25 Go Bus had been moved to a different route to avoid stopping outside the Safe Harbour pub due to concerns that reversing buses risked causing serious injury or even death to members of the public.
However, a meeting of Fowey Town Council last week heard a suggestion, supported by documentation received following a Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request, that the decision to remove the service was based on a commercial decision that had nothing to do with health and safety “and had everything to do with solving a student passenger load issue regarding Brannel School”, according to a member of the public who addressed councillors. The bus company denies this.
The minutes of the meeting record that the Fowey resident had obtained documentation from Cornwall Council under FOI and made the observation that “Cornwall Council and Go Cornwall were in collusion around using health and safety as the reason for withdrawing the service. This was simply an excuse to justify a corporate decision based on commercial interest”.
She also noted that the town’s Cornwall councillor Andy Virr “was not told the truth about the decision while he was advocating for the people of Fowey and was put into an impossible position by Cornwall Council and Go Cornwall”.
Another member of the public agreed with these observations and considered that the bus company wanted to increase the size of the buses used on the route in order to “conveniently deal” with the peak demand twice per day of pupils attending Brannel School. He said is was clear from items in the FOI documentation that “council officers colluded with the bus company to manufacture a justification for the change as being due to safety concerns”.
He told councillors he had made a FOI request similar to the one made by the woman who had previously spoken and had been told that there was no relevant information on file, when “clearly there was”. He stated that this was potentially a criminal offence and had written to Cornwall Council accordingly.
Cllr Virr cautioned that this was a serious allegation and should not be made when Cornwall Council officers were not present to respond.
We have seen council documentation sent via the FOI request, part of which states: “Due to the need to provide sufficient capacity with larger vehicles throughout the summer months this service will no longer serve the Safe Harbour Hotel stop in Fowey and will instead operate from Hanson Drive.”
Initial heavily redacted council documents don’t refer to any safety concerns, but later emails do.
Later in the Fowey Town Council meeting held on Wednesday, January 17, Deputy Mayor Cllr Patrick Hughes thanked the member of the public for sharing the documentation she had obtained about the service under FOI. He accepted that it was difficult to read due to all of the redactions and, as written in the minutes, considered that it appeared that health and safety had been used as “an excuse” by Cornwall Council and the bus company “in order mislead the public”.
He maintained that if the decision to stop the service had been made for commercial reasons then the council and Go Cornwall “should have been honest and transparent and said so, not put the blame on health and safety”.
Mayor of Fowey Cllr Lynn Simms asked for the matter to be discussed again at its February meeting.
After showing the company the town council comments and part of the redacted FOI, a spokesperson for Go Cornwall told us: “Go Cornwall Bus stand by the fact that Fowey Safe Harbour bus stop is unsafe to serve using any size of bus. When the smallest bus in our fleet served the stop it was deemed unsafe, with incidents occurring whilst turning the bus, especially in the dark.”
We have yet to receive a comment from Cornwall Council.
We asked Cllr Andy Virr if he felt he had been put in an “impossible position” as was suggested at the meeting. He didn’t reply directly to that but said: “I have met with local residents concerned about the impact of moving the terminus stop for the Go Cornwall 25 bus service. I understand the decision from the bus company is due to the need for a larger bus to manage capacity along the route. This has compounded an already difficult reversing manoeuvre required by the bus driver at the Safe Harbour bus stop, raising significant safety concerns by the bus operator.
“I have worked with Cornwall Council’s transport team to site a new bus shelter at the new stop on New Road Hill. In addition, the town council was awarded funding to improve the pedestrian route into town which makes the short distance from the old terminus stop to the new one safer.”
He added: “I am working with the transport team to look at the original bus stop at the pub to see if the highway could be adjusted to make reversing safer, allowing the reinstating of the 25 service historic terminus and with the operator of the Fowey town bus (a minibus service) to improve public transport access for anyone with mobility difficulties.”