A BATTLE plan has been drawn up to strip bus companies of the power to set routes, fares and timetables and hand control to councillors.

Strathclyde Passenger Transport wants to take charge of all bus services in Glasgow and west central Scotland.

Alistair Watson, chairman of SPT, said the change would benefit passengers because SPT would introduce improved services at evenings, weekends and on less profitable routes.

However, bus industry sources said the proposed change of control would cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds every year in subsidy.

Mr Watson praised companies like FirstGroup for investing in new buses and growing passenger numbers but said they and other operators were only interested in profitable routes.

Mr Watson said: ''There are many communities where there are no buses after 6pm because those services are not commercially attractive and that means there is no public transport whatsoever in those places.''

He added that some smaller bus companies in Glasgow were using poor quality buses.

The change would reverse the deregulation of the bus industry in 1986, which effectively privatised services that until then were controlled by councils.

Private sector bus companies, including Stagecoach, FirstGroup, Arriva and dozens of smaller owner-operators, run about 99% of buses in Glasgow. They set fares, routes and timetables and can withdraw and add services whenever they want providing they give 56 days notice to the traffic commissioner, which regulates the industry.

SPT's role at present is limited to paying about (pounds) 3.9m a year to the same companies to run loss-making services, such as rural routes, that no-one wants to operate.

Mr Watson and Charles Gordon, leader of Glasgow City Council and a member of SPT, will travel to London in the next few weeks to meet Ken Livingstone, the London mayor. They want SPT to have the same powers as Mr Livingstone's Transport for London, which specifies bus routes, fares and timetables.

Under the new set-up, SPT would control every bus service in the 12 council areas that make up SPT. Contracts would be tendered for groups of routes that included profitable and loss-making services and companies given incentives to increase passenger numbers.

The bus companies would be allowed to make a profit but their new role would essentially reduce them to a supplier of vehicles and drivers.

However, bus industry sources said that replicating the TfL model in Strathclyde would be hugely expensive to the taxpayer.

TfL spends (pounds) 600m-a-year in subsidy to operators in London. One source said: ''London is spending vast amounts of money on bus services and I do not see anyone with that cash in Scotland.''

Marjory Rodger, director of government relations for the Confederation of Passenger Transport, which represents the UK bus and coach industry, said one reason that operators withdrew services in the evenings was a rise in vandalism and assaults on staff.