by political editor Paul Francis

A senior Conservative has admitted the county council should have been more open about its commercial operations in the face of hostility from Kent businesses.

Cllr Keith Ferrin, the former cabinet member for highways and environment, was actively involved when KCC first began competing with commercial bus operators to provide services.

He conceded the council had acted partly because it felt there was a monopoly among commercial operators and wanted to see if it could drive down prices.

But he accepted there may have been less suspicion among businesses about KCC’s ventures had it been more transparent about what it was doing in the commercial sector.

His comments follow the recent publication of a independent report into KCC’s commercial operations. That effectively cleared the council of any wrong-doing and said it had not competed unfairly with business.

But in a public admission that KCC had not handled the matter well, Cllr Ferrin - now a backbencher - said: “I do think we rather let ourselves in for much of this row. We failed to be as open as we could have been. Businesses were pressing me to publish the results of tenders so they could see what prices contracts had been let for.

I could not see why that should not have happened with supported bus contracts but there was a reluctance to publish tender results. That encouraged some operators to believe there was something underhand about it when I was convinced that nothing was.”

His comments were made at a meeting of KCC’s audit committee, which accepted the recommendations of the independent report - and included a call for more openness.

Cllr Ferrin did admit that KCC wanted to break what it regarded as a monopoly among commercial operators that had maintained prices at a higher level than was necessary.

“I became convinced that there was an effective local monopoly...in truth we did not know there was and the only way to find out was to submit a tender.”

Once KCC did become involved, its presence in the market helped bring down prices, he said