Standing charge falls over...
Bus charge stop
West Midlands Travel Ltd operated 228 buses which were involved in about 3000 road traffic accidents a year of which around one-half were the fault of third parties. A lot of buses, a lot of accidents and a lot of claims. Like most bus operators, West Midlands maintained a certain amount of spare capacity to allow for accidents, maintenance, and other contingencies but all the buses in its fleet were used on a rotating basis. Because not all the fleet was on the road at any given time, the company was unable to recover loss of profit from a tortfeaser. Instead, it sought to recover a standing charge by way of general damages for loss of use and used a formula produced by the Confederation of Passenger Transport which, broadly speaking, ascribed to each bus a proportion of the total overheads incurred in operating the whole fleet. It was called a standing charge.
The standing charge concept, for public service vehicles at least, is no longer standing. It was given a one-way ticket to oblivion
