The county council confirmed that it has no intention of following national plans to franchise bus services across Hampshire since the area is “not suitable” due to its rurality.

The Labour government’s proposal aims to give more powers to local councils so they have the ability to run their own bus services for the first time since 1986.

With the move, local councils across the country would be allowed to introduce a franchising system to decide routes, timetables and fares, with operators bidding to run services for a fixed fee.

Transport minister Simon Lightwood said “enough is enough” over the country’s declining bus services.

However, despite welcoming the initiative, the county council said the franchising model is better suited to large cities and less for largely rural local authority areas like Hampshire, and therefore, there are no plans to introduce the system “at the present”.

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A spokesperson for Hampshire County Council said: “While we welcome the government’s plan to give local transport authorities the opportunity to run bus services, we have no plans to apply for a franchise at the present time.

“Large metropolitan areas often have significant bus operator competition leading to inefficiency and duplication, which then requires some form or regulation through franchising.

“In Hampshire, we don’t have that problem since the services that bus operators run across the county do not overlap very much, if at all, in the areas they cover. We work very successfully with commercial bus operators and have a clear, shared Bus Service Improvement Plan in place with ambitions for measures to make bus travel more appealing to attract more passengers, particularly aiming to encourage people to travel by bus in place of the private car for local journeys.”

The council added that although the franchising model will not be implemented, it would still benefit from more grant funding to continue delivering the £2 bus fare cap, which has proved “successful” for buses and passengers.

“If the fare cap was withdrawn, rural bus services and some of the most isolated individuals and communities would be severely impacted,” the spokesperson added.