First Group Disposals

[Garsty]

RE: First Group Disposals
In terms of Chester, in my opinion, a large bus network would be very unlikely to make money due to the nature of travel, which is very much car focused. As Chester does have an excellent road system and people, largely having a greater income compared to some areas, the use of cars is common place, if that was not the case then bus use in Chester would probably be greater, for a city of its size you would certainly expect it to be.

Mentioning GHA, I doubt they would take over the Chester operations as a whole, as they don’t tend to have large presence in a single area, but they might certainly take some aspects, mainly the aspects which are council supported, financially wise.

In terms of not selling Chester at all, Arriva could probably take over the P&R, operate solely on the QBPs and the rest of the routes could probably be met by the independents such as GHA or Helms.

That 66 bus figure for Chester also includes Wrexham of course, so would, from my perspective, be interesting to see what would go on there.