Bill for Maltby bus stop blunder tops £11,000

A BUS stop blunder which saw a shelter installed on a road with no services will actually end up costing more than £11,000.

Initial information from South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive said the purchase and installation came to £5,934.

It also said the costs were covered as part of a payment made by developers as part of planning permission for the nearby Home Bargains store at Maltby.

Firecrest Construction agreed to the estimate cost of £10,043.86, planning papers show, and a final payment of £11,183.18 was invoiced by SYPTE in January this year.

Maltby resident James Rodgers (39), who discovered the figures, said: “This now makes the cost of the blunder £5,249.18 more than we previously thought.”

A spokeswoman for SYPTE said: “In November 2017, SYPTE was asked to supply an estimate for the cost of the bus shelter improvements needed for the developer to comply with planning approval conditions.

“This total includes the shelter and installation costs, as well as shelter cleaning and maintenance costs for ten years and other associated costs, for example removal of the old bus stop pole.”

But James said: “It’s questionable how anyone can predict the future cleaning and maintenance cost for the next ten years to the nearest penny.

“In January SYPTE would have been aware of the forthcoming March changes to bus services and so perhaps should have checked if the 11 buses a day would have still served the stop, although only eight of these ran during the store opening hours, the remaining three being early morning commuter buses to Sheffield.

“They would have also known that the more frequent buses ran down Hamilton Road and had done for many years.”

SYPTE said it was currently reviewing options available for the relocation of the unused bus shelter to somewhere more suitable.