The Bus Appeals Body (BAB) is the independent body set up to review bus passenger complaints by BUS USERS UK and the Confederation for Passenger Transport (CPT). It is preparing for a substantial increase in its workload as Passenger Focus moves towards taking on its formal bus role in full in April 2010, which will raise awareness of bus passenger issues. BAB looks forward to continuing to bring its expertise to bear on resolving issues for a much greater number of bus passengers.

‘There have been suggestions that we should hand over the Bus Appeals Body role to Passenger Focus, but we believe that working in partnership with them provides the best of all worlds to give bus passengers a first-class service in getting redress when things have gone wrong for them’, said BUS USERS UK chairman Gavin Booth ‘We are aware that the Bus Appeals Body is not widely-enough known’, adds Stephen Morris, BUS USERS UK’s representative on the BAB.

‘We have always been denied Government funding and rely on voluntary contributions, so we have always been under-resourced for promoting ourselves more effectively. However we are confident that Passenger Focus with its much greater resource will increase awareness of means of redress for passengers and BUS USERS UK remains committed to ensuring Bus Appeals Body will be in a position to deal with a much heavier workload in the future’.

BUS USERS UK are encouraged by Passenger Focus’s willingness to work in partnership with them. BUS USERS UK and the Bus Appeals Body are working very closely with Passenger Focus to ensure that bus passengers enjoy the highest standard of representation. With Passenger Focus being funded by Government to work on behalf of bus passengers as well as rail, it is pushing bus passenger representation further up the agenda.

‘Government funding ensures Passenger Focus is better resourced than we are, but BUS USERS UK’s small staff have between them many years of expertise in dealing with bus passengers’ issues, which enables the Bus Appeals Body to come to appropriate decisions’, said Gavin Booth. ‘We have a good track record of getting sensible redress for passengers when things have gone wrong, based on our own expertise, our firsthand experience of using bus services ourselves and good dialogue with bus companies built up over many years. With Passenger Focus able to increase awareness we know we can make that expertise available to a much larger number of passengers in the future, and we look forward to doing so.’