Comment: Council must be tough in buses fight
Instead, an organisation that has four directors who are paid more than the First Minister, is now riven with internal fighting. And there is little prospect of this unseemly boardroom battle being parked.
The council, via transport convener Lesley Hinds, has decided that the best course of action is to keep all four directors – Ian Craig, Bill Campbell, Bill Devlin and Norman Strachan, on board.
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Hide AdGiven the potential for large taxpayer payouts to departing staff, and the fact that the operations of the company have largely been successful (bus and tram patronage are doing well), then this is understandable.
But this lets-get-together-and-work-it-all-out strategy fails to deal with the residual anger across the organisation as a whole. Deep divisions are widening between current and former staff who believe the issues have not been tackled head on. And the last person who attempted to sort this out, former Lothian Buses chair Ann Faulds, submitted her own resignation after the local authority did not back her over the sacking of Ian Craig.
This issue will not go away while reports are kept secret and details are hidden in files. This only fuels rumour and erodes confidence in the overall management.
We need truth and complete transparency from Transport for Edinburgh. Obfuscation and misdirection are not an acceptable way of dealing with this – and the staff of the bus company and the people of Edinburgh will not stand for it.