West Midlands

So you can easily do a detailed investigation without physically going to visit people these days.

A lot of the time I do visit people, especially in the West Midlands area.

I'll go out to meet them because when you meet people face to face, you get that kind of emotion thing.

You can see from the way that they're talking and the way that they're acting, you know, whether something is a real experience for them or, you know, whether they might potentially be fabricating things.

We need to hold those people to high standards and to give them proper support and challenge.

And I think I welcome the fact the government has sent in a very esteemed former chief executive from the West Midlands to Toms Valley because that's the right thing to do.

So I think there are some steps being taken that... where there's been potentially very loose safeguards, those are being tightened up.

I think in terms of comparability, I think what you will start to get over time is that as places start to do things and there's repeatability, um where there is the opportunity to learn from each other and to build on good practice that will become more established and there is examples of doing that so if you look at how bus franchising is being done across the country it is not being thought about new every time so yeah there is a significant degree of um similarity between how greater manchester did it and how liverpool city region and west yorkshire are doing it and that isn't by accident that's by design yeah point is that you're dealing with the same bus companies who are bidding for those franchises so why on earth would you make the process completely different because it just makes it harder for them to bid it makes it more difficult for them to come to the market and yes there is local issues about what franchising might be for and what sort of bus network you want But the legals and the compliance of that system can be identical to the one next door.