A YORKSHIRE-BASED bus company has been rapped on the knuckles to the tune of almost £14,000 after its Selby services were branded unreliable.

The Traffic Commissioner hit Arriva Yorkshire with a £13,933 fine after it discovered that up to 15 per cent of its services in Selby failed to arrive on time.

A public inquiry and independent monitoring during the second half of last year revealed that the services were either late, or early, according to standards set down by the Transport Commissioner.

Arriva Yorkshire's Selby depot was monitored by the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) following customer complaints.

The Traffic Commissioner hit Arriva with a fine of £550 per vehicle, but reduced the penalty by a third to take into account improvement measures put in place.

In his report, Traffic Commissioner Tom MacCartney, said: "The company has made very substantial investments in people and technology which will be expensive to implement, but promises improvement for the future."

Ken Clarke, managing director of Arriva Yorkshire, said: "Arriva Yorkshire is disappointed to receive a penalty of £13,933 under Section 155 of the Road Transport Act 2000. However, I am pleased that we were given an opportunity to explain some of the issues, such as irregular traffic congestion caused by the level crossing at Doncaster Road and the swing bridge at Selby, which impact on the punctuality of some bus services.

"The Traffic Commissioner recognised that we have made considerable efforts to improve punctuality since its monitoring exercise held in August and September 2002 which formed the basis of this inquiry. In addition, it was noted that we had put our own robust monitoring systems in place to give early warning of punctuality problems."

Arriva chiefs also pointed out that other operators were called to account by the Traffic Commissioner during April and May.

They referred to staffing issues and in particular driver shortages, which it said had impacted upon services, but had now been resolved for some time.

Updated: 10:09 Thursday, June 26, 2003