Plymouth Citybus is making job losses as it battles rising costs and falling income. The transport company is consulting with about 16 office staff but has stressed passengers will not be affected by the cuts.
The company is battling a number of economic factors which means it has to make savings. Managing director Richard Stevens said the transport sector has been hit with a 14% rise in costs this year, which comes on top of the end of Government Covid support and the implications of the £2 ticket price cap, now extended until the end of October.
“We knew we had a date with destiny when the Covid support ended,” he said. “There is some help with increased funding on 2019 levels, but nothing like what we were receiving for Covid recovery.
“On top of that, transport inflation is running at 14% year-on-year and prices are effectively capped with the Government’s £2 fare scheme.We are getting some reimbursement, but it’s a pot for the industry that is divided up amongst bus companies.”
However, Mr Stevens stressed the company’s future was still “solid” and Citybus has been in talks with Plymouth City Council about the future of transport. He said passenger numbers have grown by an astonishing 10.5% year-on-year and added: “That’s fantastic. So it is not all bad news, but at the moment we have to be able to pay our bills and stabilise, to grow from where we are.”
Its never good news when people find their jobs under threat so I hope that the staff affected manage to get new employment quickly. Many operators are struggling at the moment as barely a week seems to go by without at least one operator falling by the wayside, even some quite big ones. The issue with the capped fares isnt going to go away anytime soon as as the cap will rise to £2.50 in November but them seemingly be fixed for twelve months. I do wonder if many operators will end up excluding themselves from this scheme.
Plymouth Citybus makes job cuts as it battles inflation and £2 fare cap https://t.co/WzjSynLlZB
— Plymouth Live (@Plymouth_Live) September 5, 2023
well that's never good news but as a Privately owned transport company surely GoAhead can step in with additional funding for the company providing they can prove the passenger numbers are rising? Or is it again such a case where other parts of the country come first with new bus investment instead
ReplyDeletethe investment will follow the money! There is a fair bit of money flowing into a few selected areas. If you are in an area which is getting the money then you will get the new buses. Plymouth certainly isnt getting much
DeleteFrom what I'm told the new Australian and Spanish owners of GoAhead, having paid handsomely for the Group, don't want to spend more money propping up loss-making operations. The individual companies have to find a way of standing on their own two feet commercially.
DeleteBased on the latest accounts the other loss-makers are Go North-East and Oxford.
that's an interesting insight, the two loss makers you've provided are receiving new buses... granted, from Government funding but still...
Deleteagree with that - and Oxford / GNE are the fellow Go companies that we’ve been talking about a lot recently
Deletemainly due to fleet movements though
Plymouth Citybus is part of the Go Ahead group and not privately owned
DeleteGoAhead is a Private Limited Company, no?
DeleteThe Go Ahead Group on its entirety is privately owned. A combination of Australian and Spanish owners. I don't understand why so many people have difficulty understanding that Go Ahead is privately owned these days
DeleteAnon@ 19:55 the government funding was made to the respective local authorities, who then distributed it to the operators appropriate to the areas where they wanted to allocate zero emission buses. In the case of Oxford the county council wanted to electrify the city's bus services so distributed funding more or less evenly between the two dominant operators, namely Stagecoach and GoAhead.
DeleteHmmm so they can't make any money, but they can afford to grab contracts from Stagecoach and chopping/changing the timetable every week???
ReplyDeleteContracts are changing between operators all the time, It wasn't that long ago that Stagecoach were dropping services and Citybus were being asked to take them on. recently as SC seem to have managed to recruit more staff they have taken some of them back on. As for changing timetables every week sorry but thats just not happening anywhere near as much as it used to a few years back. The Plymouth city services have hardly changed over the last year at all - compare this with Exeter. If Devon hadn't found the money I wonder how many evening service they would have left? over 80% of the service registration changes by Citybus this year so far have occurred over just two weekends - in April and September centred around the requirements of the Cornwall contracts. Perhaps if they cancelled most of their evening services in Plymouth and got the council to pay for them instead they might not need to cut back their staff? That's assuming that Plymouth City Council have any money to pay for them?
ReplyDelete4013 E400 sounds terrible - only just been put into service but sounds like its dying already
ReplyDeleteAnon@ 08:33 9th Sept. Yes they are a private operation but it appears Go South West is loss making so how about they pull out of the Kernow contract and use that to sort out the messy Citybus fleet. Since about 2013 GA have become greedy and constantly tried to expand, each time it's failed or caused more issues, Go Aheads biggest problem is Go Ahead.
ReplyDeletewell GA has itself changed over the last year or so and no doubt we will see the new owners making their mark in the coming year or so. As for just giving up on Cornwall, we have no idea what parts of GSW are losing the most money at the moment. As TFC have money to spend I suspect that its the Plymouth operations that are the issue but could well be wrong. GA expansion generally seems to have gone well. Even the Anglian operation now seems to be running well and getting investment. At then end of the day many operators are struggling at the moment. Every month we are seeing operators going bust or withdrawing from operations. Every month we are seeing the big groups reducing services, closing garages, etc to try and reduce costs. Citybus is just one of these. We have yet to see any significant withdrawal of services in Plymouth as they seem to be trying to do all they can to keep it that way.
DeleteIf passengers were given the choice of keeping current service levels or having nice new buses running fewer services I know what they would go for. It does sound like there are more buses due from within the group over the next few months so hopefully some of the older buses will go and that will improve things as well
i do agree with both of you here (James/Graham) but if you look at the number of routes that PCB have withdrawn, it is noticable, particuarly in older photos of buses and you see routes that used to exist.
Deletei think that goes for the whole of Plymouth's bus services - for example the lost of First and Stagecoach routes (such as the 101 P&R) - which was a major loss.
what annoys me most - are the excessive routes such as the 42(a,b,c) - and then ie the 21(a) - and their high frequency. Yes arguably they are important routes but certain areas of the city are just totally cut off - ie Derriford to Ham basically having a non-existent service via the 14. there are plenty of other examples and I know not everywhere can be perfectly covered but still...
and the state of the fleet... well that leaves little to be desired.
and why did PCB take on the Dartmoor routes when they can barely run busy routes - and not sleepy rural routes that use a minibus....
Completely agree with you anon @19:05. The expansion in to Exeter for example was a total disaster that cost the company a lot of money in hiring contractors and then pulling out of the contract early.
DeleteThe bus industry needs nationalising
ReplyDeleteI think so too, the money making routes can cover the loss making ones so that everyone has the opportunity to use a service. I.e. the loss making 39 that was cut due to it not being profitable would be covered by the profit on busier services.
Deletenationalised buses don't necessarily mean better services. Many of us are old enough to remember the last year of the National Bus Company. They decimated rural services across the country. Putting politicians in charge of services only works when those politicians know what they are doing and have the money to spend. When those politicians also have to fund lots of other services from their limited budgets then buses will end up being cut again. Its happened before and will happen again. The last years of Plymouth Citybus under council ownership were not brilliant at all. Very limited investment in new buses, no new double decker's for years.
DeleteWell said Graham. Buses and politicians do not mix well, never have and never will. It will be interesting to see what happens in Manchester once the financials hit home. See also Roger French's blog about the 84B in Barnet to see how politicians plan a service rather than bus professionals. The NBC was all about managed decline, death by a thousand cuts. Ok some of that was needed but to see how reinvigorated the industry became when the newly privatised NBC companies were able to run themselves was remarkable. So much fresh thinking, new initiatives and imaginative marketing. A belief in growing the market rather than managing its decline.
DeleteI agree with Graham, we've already seen what an utter mess the government has made to the post covid nationalised railway. The last thing we need is them messing up bus services too! In my own opinion I think community co-operative style transport could be the future.
DeleteThe government should be subsidising more with the £2 scheme, it was them that came up with the scheme and admittedly its an opt-in kind of situation but the bus companies should be subsidised for the lower income, it will just mean that when the scheme ends the bus companies will just push prices higher than they where before to recoup some of the lost revenue.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that Stagecoach are pulling out of the fare cap scheme at the end of October when it goes up to £2.50
ReplyDeleteGovernment interference is the route of all the issues with the industry, cutting BSOG, Introducing the ENCTS scheme and then cutting the funding for it after a trial, then taking BSOG on subsidised services away from the operator and giving it to the councils, where the money isn't ring fenced. now the £2 scheme, which bus companies seem not to be being fairly compensated for. It does seem most of the problems are from government under funding and interference
ReplyDeleteHedingham have also made a large number of office staff and middle management redundant in the last few weeks.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest Citybus has always appeared management too heavy. Just go past Greggs on royal parade and there is always plenty of management about propping up the outside of greggs.
Citybus’s problem is its a badly run operation. Some people may question this but as a former driver who left pre-pandemic, they fail to even get the basics right. 1 Its what the customer wants not what you want. 2 run a reliable service and people will use it. 3 Keep changing bus numbers and routes and people will get fed up. Services are not reliable, buses look a mess internally and externally and its clear most stuff is done on the cheap. Whats sad is pre Go Ahead days Plymouth Citybus were a respectable firm and the buses looked the part. If any jobs should go it should be as a minimum the MD whos run it into the ground, the timeabling/schedules management. As for customer feedback we would submit comments back and nothing would ever be taken onboard.
ReplyDeleteI'd agree with most of that, I wouldn't say the MD has run it into the ground. Just done the usual bare minimum and been greedy trying to expand here there and everywhere, along with pushing First out of Plymouth. The council run operation wasn't that great though, no new double deckers for years (GA 2013,2015,2017& 2019). The fleet was also in 3 or 4 different liveries if I remember Citaros had one, Enviros another and the rest of the fleet mainly the Darts in 3 or 4 variations in between.
DeleteAlways worth remembering that the Council brought in the exLondon Pioneers, 2001/2002 registered, 7/8 years old with internal retirn. They may not have been new, granted, but by current standards they are world away from the 17 year old scabby Brighton Scanias brought in to front line service by GoAhead.
Deleteexactly @ anon 23:40 - the state of the fleet is a shambles and the 17yr old ex-Brighton scanias are horrifying and embarrasing.
DeleteCitybus honestly remind me of First in the final years in Plymouth. I think GA have lost interest in Plymouth as they can't make a profit. I expect to see services cut even more in next 12 months desperately trying to keep the operation afloat
Deletenot sure I agree that First was pushed out by GA. White the council were deciding to sell the operation First registered several service to compete which then slowly fell by the wayside once GA took control. First could have made more and the Ugo bus showed some promise and offered genuinely useful additional services over what Citybus did but sadly First didnt seem to go anywhere with it and quite quickly they started to roll back. GA were up for the fight, First werent sadly
ReplyDelete