Will Tories fight on a Citybus manifesto?

8.54.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 2nd Jul 2009

MANY of us by now will have read Councillor Pengelly's letter (Your Say, June 20) giving her point of view regarding the possible sale of Plymouth Citybus. Few of us, I suspect, will have been reassured by the points she has made.

Let us first take the positives. Citybus is a 'significant council asset'. It is 'well run, and provides an efficient service across a local network'. Really that should be the beginning and end of the debate as far as Plymouth residents are concerned. It shows that some of our taxes are being well spent.

However, Councillor Pengelly then asks if it is right that the council should remain as the major shareholder? Well, if the council owns the majority of the shares, the people elect the council, and if those same people keep writing to the local press to plead with you not to sell - signing petitions to that effect, setting up websites, and bringing their case to the centre of the city on a busy Saturday, all eliciting the same positive response - then I would say that this, too, should be the beginning and end of the debate.

If our council leader cannot connect this then perhaps we should all lobby David Cameron, to gauge his assessment of the situation, because, come next Election Day, his Parliamentary candidates could well find that this contentious local issue proves to be a significant stumbling block to his quest of winning seats in Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, and retaining Gary Streeter's South West Devon constituency, part of which - Plympton - is served by Plymouth Citybus.

I have to worry when Councillor Pengelly states that "it is only by offering shares for sale that we can assess the true value of the company".

So why, then, is she spending nearly £1m of our money to find out? Money that I believe could have been invested back into bus services or vehicles? And are we so naive to believe that this process can be stopped at any point, and that not all of that staggering sum of money will be spent if the decision to sell is aborted?

I would say that if the council is prepared to spend this much, and if this project has been costed accordingly, then that, indeed, will be the total amount due, and Councillor Pengelly is more committed to a sale than she is letting on.

I felt there was a degree of condescension in Councillor Pengelly's declaration that no-one buys a business to run it down, and that the existing staff of Citybus would be required to operate as usual. While I would dare to trust that no-one would purchase this company with a view to asset-stripping, I would like her to know that the staff are worried about something that is far more likely to happen under new ownership: streamlining. When any new owners see aspects of the business that are running at a loss, as soon as they are able they deem them 'unworkable', and cut them off irretrievably.

Councillor Pengelly has not stated why she chose a non-election year to bring about this controversial decision into the public domain. Is she courageous enough to defer a potential sale until after the next round of council elections in 2010, and allow her fellow Conservatives to stand on a manifesto that includes a possible/probable sale of the company? And how confident will they be of re-election, knowing how ardently the people of Plymouth are campaigning to save Citybus now? If Citybus is to be sold we won't forget come next May.

JANETTE MARSH

Southway

JanetteMarsh is an independent contributor of this story to local media.