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Inverness
Thursday, February 13, 2025

Greens Celebrate Return of Public Buses to Highland Roads

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Ariane Burgess, Scottish Green MSP for the Highlands & Islands has welcomed the news that Highland Council will be directly delivering public transport services following the acquisition of D&E Coaches Ltd:

“During the last Parliamentary session, Scottish Greens secured the legal changes needed for Councils to own and operate local bus services again, so it’s wonderful that Highland Council has taken advantage of this change to improve local services and secure jobs and routes.

“Rural Councils particularly have struggled with private companies operating profitable routes, leaving many lifeline services entirely reliant on subsidy.

“While concessions like free bus travel for under 22s has helped to direct more funding from the Scottish Government to local services, we can see from elsewhere the difference running services for people not profit makes.”

Chris Ballance (Scottish Green Councillor, Aird and Loch Ness and Deputy Leader City of Inverness Area) said:

“Greens have been enthusiastically supporting this through all the Council meetings held in private over the past 6 months.

“This gives the Council an extra 70 vehicles – buses, modern coaches, minibuses, all sizes to fit the different sizes and needs of different Highland communities.

“This will enable the Council to make instant savings on school transport, and over the next couple of years to improve bus services across the region.

“Having a publicly owned bus service could prove transformational for the Highlands.

“I think it’s great that the owners of D & E specifically favoured selling the company into public ownership.

“We can run public services for the benefit of the public, not for the profit of shareholders.

“I congratulate senior officers of the Council, from the top down, who have worked extraordinarily hard to take advantage of this unique opportunity as soon as it came up and moved the purchase through smoothly and rapidly.”

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