Bus franchising – Competition and Markets Authority advice for Local Transport Authorities

This webinar took place on Monday 18 November 2024

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is a statutory consultee for franchising and Enhanced Partnership proposals. In this webinar, we discussed the recently published bus franchising advice paper for LTAs. The paper is intended to be a helpful tool for LTAs that are considering franchising proposals or developing franchising plans. We provided a high-level overview of the paper, what is in scope of the paper, and how the CMA can assist LTAs considering franchising proposals.

More broadly the advice consolidates and builds upon competition insights and reflections from our franchising proposal reviews to date (thus far GMCA, LCRCA and WYCA). The CMA’s intention is to assist LTAs in meeting their policy objectives, by helping LTAs to think about how different interventions may affect markets, the role competition can play in supporting the objectives of LTAs, and franchising design considerations that may help promote competition and thereby help deliver long-term policy objectives.

Please email advocacy@cma.gov.uk if you have any questions prior to the session regarding the paper or presentation that we may be able to capture.

Presenters:
Cameron Jones, Assistant Economic Policy Adviser & Paul Barnes-Royall, Head of Advocacy.

Cameron and Paul are part of the CMA’s advocacy team and have been heavily engaged with bus policy. Following the Bus Service Act 2017 the team has reviewed over 50 enhanced partnership proposals prior to publishing the EP advice paper in 2023. More recently, the advocacy team has formally responded to three combined authority franchising consultations and engaged more widely with LTAs and other stakeholder in the development of the franchising advice paper.