THE county council is looking for passenger transport operators in Gloucestershire and neighbouring counties to join its new transport buying pool.

The council spends about £20 million a year on public, community, home to school and other transport services and wants to hear from operators large and small that it can call on to fulfil these needs.

Gloucestershire County Council‘s current arrangement for buying transport is coming to an end after four years so the opportunity is being taken to put in place a more flexible transport buying system open to existing and new transport suppliers.

All transport operators are being encouraged to get in touch and organisations that currently work with the council to provide transport will need to apply to join the new system.

The council is particularly interested in hearing from organisations based outside the county that are willing to work within Gloucestershire close to the county borders.

Vulnerable people of all ages often rely on the council for safe and secure transport so operators need the necessary licences and satisfactory DBS checks for drivers must be in place.

Councillor Will Windsor-Clive, cabinet member for fire, planning and infrastructure said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for operators to get involved in supplying services to the county council.

“Many of these companies will be small and medium sized businesses and it’s great that we can provide work for local people and inject significant amounts of money into the county’s economy.

“We recently surveyed our current operators about their experiences of working with us and we were pleased that although there was clearly room for improvement, over 80 per cent thought we resolved issues to an acceptable level and were committed to making it as straightforward as possible to work with us.”

Workshops for interested operators are running throughout November. Two have already taken place in the Forest of Dean and Cotswolds, with three more being held in Swindon, Gloucester and near Cheltenham.

Any passenger transport organisation interested in attending can get in touch by email on sppassenger@gloucestershire.gov.uk for further details.