Council bosses want to find out if rising fares are at the root of declining satisfaction for bus passengers in Northumberland.

The Northumberland County Council Transport Activity Report 2019-20 also revealed that the cost of taking children to school during the year was more than £15.1m – £9.57m for mainstream students and £5.65m for those with special educational needs.

This includes post-16 students attending their nearest school or college, after free travel was reintroduced in 2018-19.

In terms of passenger satisfaction, the document, which was presented to the meeting of the North-East Joint Transport Committee, stated that a bus passenger survey was carried out in the autumn of 2019.

 "The results of the survey were slightly disappointing with most metrics showing a reduction in performance when compared with previous years," it said. "However, performance across Northumberland is still above average when compared with other authorities.

"Overall journey satisfaction out-turn shows a reduction of two per cent when compared with the previous year. One possible explanation for this could be due to the above average fares increases across the bus sector which would invariably affect users’ overall satisfaction with the service."

The figures also show that overall satisfaction was down by seven per cent from 2017. Value for money had actually stayed at the level it was in 2018, while punctuality improved by three per cent. The big drop came in the journey time measure, which fell by five per cent.

Council leader Glen Sanderson told the meeting: “I’m really quite concerned about the satisfaction survey we carried out.

“I’m told it was because the fares had gone up and therefore passengers were a bit grumpy about that, but I have asked that we do a little bit more work on this to establish if that is the reason and what we, as a council, might be able to do to improve that.”

The report concludes that rural areas rely on community transport to serve the public. It said ‘while urban areas continue to enjoy excellent transport links to major employment and leisure centres in Northumberland, the rural parts of Northumberland continue to rely on supported services and community transport to meet their public transport needs.’