Transport for London says it has safeguarded the 812 PlusBus which runs between Hoxton and Angel after plans by Islington Council to cancel the service.
TfL has agreed to provide funding for the route, which is mainly used by elderly passengers, until 2013 after which the council must provide funding for at least a further two years.
The council had previously asked Mayor of London Boris Johnson to save the route.
Mayor Johnson said “It would have been wrong for the many elderly residents who rely on this service to suffer if the borough withdrew their funding for this service.”
TfL have stressed that it has not previously been called on to contribute to the scheme’s running costs and that earlier funding and plans to axe the route had all been decided locally.
The funding agreement allows TfL to reclaim the £200,000 funding in the borough fails to honour its commitment to fund a further two years of service.
The Mayor said officers “have made it clear to the borough that this is no short term fix and that they must ensure that the service can continue to run after the TfL funding has stopped.”
Paul Convery says
This is not quite right. Islington Council did not “ask the Mayor to save the route”. We meely sought permission to use part of our annual TfL grant to pay for the service instead of funding it from our main budgets. At first Johnson said no. Then relented with a poison pill deal which lets Islington use part of the CTfL grant but only until 2013. Then Islington has to pick-up the tab in full. That will also be when the fullest effects of the £100m cuts from central government will really be hitting this Borough. The Mayor’s budgets from central government have been cut, it’s true. But Islington has already suffered almost 4 times the level of cutbacks faced by the Mayor.