First Group: General Discussion

[buscoaster]

It has been announced that First Bus are withdrawing from Southampton.

 

[Delenn]

It has been announced that First Bus are withdrawing from Southampton.

That'sbig news. Sounds like it came out of the blue for the drivers.

 

[Beemax]

That'sbig news. Sounds like it came out of the blue for the drivers.

More here

'Distressing news' as City Red set to axe all services in Southampton

City Red has put in plans to cut all services across the city by February 2023.

www.dailyecho.co.uk

 

[stevenedin]

More here

'Distressing news' as City Red set to axe all services in Southampton

City Red has put in plans to cut all services across the city by February 2023.

www.dailyecho.co.uk

That’s shocking announcing it through an app. Companies just don’t care these days.

 

[GusB]

Dedicated thread here:

First to close Southampton depot

First has informed staff that they are intending to close their Cityred operation in Southampton from Sunday 19th February 2023. The briefing reads: Closure of Southampton Depot It is with much regret that I must inform you that we are proposing to close our operation in Southampton from...

www.railforums.co.uk

 

[Simon75]

Could we see other First areas, either being sold or closed down ?

 

[bussnapperwm]

Could we see other First areas, either being sold or closed down ?

I wouldn't be surprised if Worcester got sold off to Rotala.

 

[heathrowrail]

Could we see other First areas, either being sold or closed down ?

First don't really have a clue what they want to do with the business sadly, It got better for a few years 2015 - 2019 but it's going back downhill again. I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly shut down most of Berkshire, Worcester and even Cornwall with the way GoAhead have expanded.

 

[JD2168]

Surprise that Southampton City Red will close, especially after some StreetDecks were sent there from Leeds you would think they were quite busy.

 

[Goldfish62]

First don't really have a clue what they want to do with the business sadly, It got better for a few years 2015 - 2019 but it's going back downhill again. I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly shut down most of Berkshire, Worcester and even Cornwall with the way GoAhead have expanded.

I can certainly see those and Potteries as potential targets.

 

[M803UYA]

First don't really have a clue what they want to do with the business sadly, It got better for a few years 2015 - 2019 but it's going back downhill again. I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly shut down most of Berkshire, Worcester and even Cornwall with the way GoAhead have expanded.

I would be, as all three of those areas have benefited from management time and have been developed in the last few years. Cornwall, in particular has a solid commercial network backed up by academic contract work and they have eliminated the loss leading parts of Berkshire (to Reading Buses) in the last 7 years. Worcester is a standalone depot tacked onto Potteries?

Somewhere like Yeovil I'm surprised is still going, but they also undertake some contract work alongside a small peak vehicle requirement commercial network. The depot, upon takeover had an allocation of 63 vehicles with around 15 of them being outstationed. You could easily relocate it to an edge of town industrial unit and dispose of the depot for redevelopment.

Whilst I don't know the actual numbers, something like Bridgwater and Taunton might be profitable under a single operator with it's diverse workload. Bridgwater for instance undertakes certain engineering functions for Taunton and Yeovil due to space considerations and has a large post 16 college requiring a number of bus services to deliver students, and more than half of them are double decker buses operated by First.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

First don't really have a clue what they want to do with the business sadly, It got better for a few years 2015 - 2019 but it's going back downhill again. I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly shut down most of Berkshire, Worcester and even Cornwall with the way GoAhead have expanded.

The pandemic has just disrupted those plans

Surprise that Southampton City Red will close, especially after some StreetDecks were sent there from Leeds you would think they were quite busy.

A few busy journeys doesn't pay for a depot

 

[DD12]

I wouldn't be surprised if Worcester got sold off to Rotala.

As Rotala are still pursuing their established acquisitions policy, it would seem to be a very likely acquisition, BUT there are certain considerations :-

One is that the city council have agreed to boot-out the bus depot from it's current central site, and after a very long time, there is still no alternative site earmarked.

Two is that traffic jams have returned to be at least as bad as before the pandemic, -- -- the X50 ( - a service with potential) had 5 sets of temporary lights for road works, yesterday, - this and other road works were causing delays of 45 mins on some routes, and delays like this have been going-on for a few years now.

( One of Diamond's own, -- the 149S, appears to have arrived 45 mins late this morning, despite having been on-time at the edge of the city ).

If Diamond (Rotala) were to take-over, they would have to cope with the same problems.

There is another option that First might consider, and that is to stay in Worcester (with an acceptable location for the depot) and keep the school and college time work and contracts, and the high frequency 30 and 35 services --
and drop everything else, - unless very high subsidies are forthcoming ( - but with the passengers still facing waits of 30 to 45 minutes !)

In my opinion, Diamond ( - or Go Ahead, etc) would also need these very high subsidies).

Since becoming part of the West of England and Wales structure, there have been no encouraging noises from the new management for Worcester.

The only people who are using Worcester's buses are people who cannot walk or cycle, and have no car.

So much for "Bus Back Better" !!

 

[Robertj21a]

I would be, as all three of those areas have benefited from management time and have been developed in the last few years. Cornwall, in particular has a solid commercial network backed up by academic contract work and they have eliminated the loss leading parts of Berkshire (to Reading Buses) in the last 7 years. Worcester is a standalone depot tacked onto Potteries?

Somewhere like Yeovil I'm surprised is still going, but they also undertake some contract work alongside a small peak vehicle requirement commercial network. The depot, upon takeover had an allocation of 63 vehicles with around 15 of them being outstationed. You could easily relocate it to an edge of town industrial unit and dispose of the depot for redevelopment.

Whilst I don't know the actual numbers, something like Bridgwater and Taunton might be profitable under a single operator with it's diverse workload. Bridgwater for instance undertakes certain engineering functions for Taunton and Yeovil due to space considerations and has a large post 16 college requiring a number of bus services to deliver students, and more than half of them are double decker buses operated by First.

Surely, Worcester is just a small (vulnerable) stand alone operation - with no connection to Potteries ?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I would be, as all three of those areas have benefited from management time and have been developed in the last few years. Cornwall, in particular has a solid commercial network backed up by academic contract work and they have eliminated the loss leading parts of Berkshire (to Reading Buses) in the last 7 years. Worcester is a standalone depot tacked onto Potteries?

Somewhere like Yeovil I'm surprised is still going, but they also undertake some contract work alongside a small peak vehicle requirement commercial network. The depot, upon takeover had an allocation of 63 vehicles with around 15 of them being outstationed. You could easily relocate it to an edge of town industrial unit and dispose of the depot for redevelopment.

Whilst I don't know the actual numbers, something like Bridgwater and Taunton might be profitable under a single operator with it's diverse workload. Bridgwater for instance undertakes certain engineering functions for Taunton and Yeovil due to space considerations and has a large post 16 college requiring a number of bus services to deliver students, and more than half of them are double decker buses operated by First.

I think Slough is probably ok with RailAir and some decent routes.

Yeovil depot is a true throwback to bygone days. The site has been up for sale in the past and, tellingly, what was a motley collection of lock ups, and a warehouse and van depot, situated behind was redeveloped into two new blocks of flats. So I suspect that the depot site will be redeveloped sooner rather than later.

As for the rest of Somerset, it is thin territory and always has been.

Surely, Worcester is just a small (vulnerable) stand alone operation - with no connection to Potteries ?

I never like to speculate as we have to consider those who work there; also, no one was predicting Southampton being closed recently so who knows the future for any depot of any firm.

Worcester is a vulnerable standalone operation but it doesn't have a strong competitor like BlueStar. And yes, it's now part of West of England and Wales, rather than linked with Potteries.

 

[Goldfish62]

I would be, as all three of those areas have benefited from management time and have been developed in the last few years. Cornwall, in particular has a solid commercial network backed up by academic contract work and they have eliminated the loss leading parts of Berkshire (to Reading Buses) in the last 7 years. Worcester is a standalone depot tacked onto Potteries?

Somewhere like Yeovil I'm surprised is still going, but they also undertake some contract work alongside a small peak vehicle requirement commercial network. The depot, upon takeover had an allocation of 63 vehicles with around 15 of them being outstationed. You could easily relocate it to an edge of town industrial unit and dispose of the depot for redevelopment.

Whilst I don't know the actual numbers, something like Bridgwater and Taunton might be profitable under a single operator with it's diverse workload. Bridgwater for instance undertakes certain engineering functions for Taunton and Yeovil due to space considerations and has a large post 16 college requiring a number of bus services to deliver students, and more than half of them are double decker buses operated by First.

First South West needs to settle its drivers' pay dispute. It's been going on for far too long. Its outlook isn't assured without that.

 

[tbtc]

1. A number of depots are tagged together for management purposes, even if they have no routes in common, i wouldn’t get too hung up about what’s technically an “outstation” of somewhere else, it’s just a paper exercise that only matters in terms of higher levels of management, where an operation like the Potteries or Leicester might not be large enough to justify certain overheads itself so shares some back office/ managerial functions with another part of the empire

2. Some comments asking the lines of “First might stop operating in Town X” or “The biggest other operator in Town X may be happy if they had a local monopoly and First left the scene”, but I don’t know about many operators being rich enough for “buyouts”. Go Ahead are essentially getting a monopoly in the Southampton area without having to buy First out (so no long running enquiry into “competition” etc), just like we saw in a number of other areas - if the First fleet is largely First-spec (Streetlites) then they’ll no doubt want to keep it to replace older buses elsewhere and if the local First fleet is fairly life expired then I can’t see anyone posting much money for it, so what would a commercial firm be buying in Worcester? Goodwill? With First’s reputation, really? Don’t waste money buying them out, just wait for them to give up and walk away instead

3. Sometimes, the places most vulnerable to being bought out are the ones that First would ideally want to keep the most. So the fact that somewhere like (to pick an operation with no evidence/ science behind it) York looks like a well run profitable operation that First are in no hurry to get rid of may also be a good reason why another operator would actually like to buy it - the likes of Stagecoach/ Go Ahead/ Transdev Blazefield aren’t going to want the bad apples (Oldham!), they want the viable stuff, so I’m always a bit wary of the way that “Town X seems to be doing well” becomes “There’s no way that First will sell Town X” - its success might be the very reason for its sale

4. Talking of Oldham, it’s funny to be reminded of some of the minor bits of empire that are still left, a bit like realising that your football club is still paying the wages of someone who was injured a couple of years ago and hasn’t been seen in a pair of shorts since then - I’m sure that First would have sold it off ages ago if there were a viable buyer (a depot for Vantage west of central Manchester can’t be hard to sort out, surely), but it’s stuck at the moment

 

[StretfordEnd96]

4. Talking of Oldham, it’s funny to be reminded of some of the minor bits of empire that are still left, a bit like realising that your football club is still paying the wages of someone who was injured a couple of years ago and hasn’t been seen in a pair of shorts since then - I’m sure that First would have sold it off ages ago if there were a viable buyer (a depot for Vantage west of central Manchester can’t be hard to sort out, surely), but it’s stuck at the moment

Yes absolutely - living in Oldham myself it's all a bit strange as I think most of the general public bus users who don't probably know as much about bus operations as much as us and others in the forum, they haven't a clue that First Greater Manchester is just an Oldham affair these days - I think most would just assume it's still one of the biggest bus companies in Greater Manchester and that they operate all over.

I feel they want to leave GM permanently as I don't see them sell themselves or advertise anywhere near as much as Stagecoach. I have seen a few adverts which are tailored to Oldham only. They have cut services back considerably in the last 10 years or so (though I acknowledge this isn't always their own decision or choice and other operators have done similar).

 

[Goldfish62]

I feel they want to leave GM permanently.

I think that will depend on whether they win any of the franchising tranches.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

1. A number of depots are tagged together for management purposes, even if they have no routes in common, i wouldn’t get too hung up about what’s technically an “outstation” of somewhere else, it’s just a paper exercise that only matters in terms of higher levels of management, where an operation like the Potteries or Leicester might not be large enough to justify certain overheads itself so shares some back office/ managerial functions with another part of the empire

2. Some comments asking the lines of “First might stop operating in Town X” or “The biggest other operator in Town X may be happy if they had a local monopoly and First left the scene”, but I don’t know about many operators being rich enough for “buyouts”. Go Ahead are essentially getting a monopoly in the Southampton area without having to buy First out (so no long running enquiry into “competition” etc), just like we saw in a number of other areas - if the First fleet is largely First-spec (Streetlites) then they’ll no doubt want to keep it to replace older buses elsewhere and if the local First fleet is fairly life expired then I can’t see anyone posting much money for it, so what would a commercial firm be buying in Worcester? Goodwill? With First’s reputation, really? Don’t waste money buying them out, just wait for them to give up and walk away instead

3. Sometimes, the places most vulnerable to being bought out are the ones that First would ideally want to keep the most. So the fact that somewhere like (to pick an operation with no evidence/ science behind it) York looks like a well run profitable operation that First are in no hurry to get rid of may also be a good reason why another operator would actually like to buy it - the likes of Stagecoach/ Go Ahead/ Transdev Blazefield aren’t going to want the bad apples (Oldham!), they want the viable stuff, so I’m always a bit wary of the way that “Town X seems to be doing well” becomes “There’s no way that First will sell Town X” - its success might be the very reason for its sale

4. Talking of Oldham, it’s funny to be reminded of some of the minor bits of empire that are still left, a bit like realising that your football club is still paying the wages of someone who was injured a couple of years ago and hasn’t been seen in a pair of shorts since then - I’m sure that First would have sold it off ages ago if there were a viable buyer (a depot for Vantage west of central Manchester can’t be hard to sort out, surely), but it’s stuck at the moment

No small amount of truth there.

There is the fascination of some who look at some isolated operation and the immediate suspicion is that it would be first in line to be flogged off. As you say, there's not too many willing buyers anyway and, in the case of Southampton, it wasn't an isolated operation. What had happened was that a very capable competitor had become the primary operator on account of a separate contract and that underpinned commercial expansion that First could not respond to. That's not to say that First hadn't mismanaged the business in the past (as it did on a corporate and local level). Places like Oldham, Worcester or York don't have those competitive battles going on, unlike in Livingston and Southampton. Somewhat curiously, they had the pain in Livingston and ultimately largely survived but at some cost to both themselves and Lothian.

Those isolated operations don't have massively back offices of old; much is centralised anyway on a regional or national basis. There is direct local management (Depot Manager etc), and then regionalised/semi local (Engineering Manager, MD, etc) and so on, so back office costs are pretty lean. I'd be interested to see how many staff actually work in the Empress Road offices given that First Hants has a total of 21 management and admin staff; First Midland Red has FOUR, with an allocation for some of the former MD's time (Nigel Eggleton).

As for Oldham, I believe that there was an interested party at the time of the other GM sales. However, it fell through and no one else wanted to take it. I believe Vantage is part of the issue with some onerous contractuals in there. Despite that, it was profitable in the last FY and they are probably ok with it bumping along until such time as Andy Burnham's plans come along

 

[bunty0657]

I am not sure that First have no interest in Manchester franchising, or other less-developed reregulation plans elsewhere. Marc Reddy has been retained as director of franchised bidding (or something very similar), which as he's a strong talent who could presumably find employment at director level elsewhere without too much difficulty suggests that First do have a desire to come out of franchising with something.

 

[ChrisPJ]

I’m always a bit wary of the way that “Town X seems to be doing well” becomes “There’s no way that First will sell Town X” - its success might be the very reason for its sale

That’s exactly what happened in London. Sort of.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I am not sure that First have no interest in Manchester franchising, or other less-developed reregulation plans elsewhere. Marc Reddy has been retained as director of franchised bidding (or something very similar), which as he's a strong talent who could presumably find employment at director level elsewhere without too much difficulty suggests that First do have a desire to come out of franchising with something.

That is what I was meaning - just they're not going to do anything with Oldham to develop it prior to a move to franchising. They may well be interested in going for franchises in Manchester

 

[Goldfish62]

That is what I was meaning - just they're not going to do anything with Oldham to develop it prior to a move to franchising. They may well be interested in going for franchises in Manchester

I think you can probably safely assume that's the case.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I think you can probably safely assume that's the case.

I assume they're in the nine operators who've submitted - I did get told some of the firms but can't recall all of them

 

[heathrowrail]

I would be, as all three of those areas have benefited from management time and have been developed in the last few years. Cornwall, in particular has a solid commercial network backed up by academic contract work and they have eliminated the loss leading parts of Berkshire (to Reading Buses) in the last 7 years. Worcester is a standalone depot tacked onto Potteries?

Cornwall's network was pre-pandemic, Post-pandemic who knows? All of the tendered work has gone to another company so they have nothing to fall back on, they've also been doing a lot of risky expansions into Exeter, Dartmoor, Exmoor which could suggest they are looking to find alternative income? Even Bristol which is one of First's jewels has been decimated post Covid.

 

[NorthernSpirit]

Could we see other First areas, either being sold or closed down ?

More likely being shrunk with frequencies being revised to work in conjunction with other services where possible, such as in Leeds with services 1/1B/N1/6/8/27/28 running through Headingley - I can see services 1/6/8/27 and 28 all being cut to run hourly a piece sometime in the future, however between West Park and the city centre it would be frequent because of the number of services running through Headingley centre.

Daft as it may be, I can see the Oldham operation soldiering on with just Vantage and the 184 (Huddersfield to Oldham/Manchester) and the Pompey, Berkshire and Wessex operation being relocated to Slough.

 

[Volvodart]

That’s exactly what happened in London. Sort of.

They had to sell London because they stupidly put a value on the disposals they were making and what they did sell did not come near that value so they sold London.

 

[richw]

they've also been doing a lot of risky expansions into Exeter, Dartmoor, Exmoor which could suggest they are looking to find alternative income?

Exmoor has been a huge success and is seeing further expansion next summer.
Likewise in Cornwall the traditional open top routes have been performing very well.
Concession pass usage has fallen considerably post pandemic across the whole country suggesting the elderly aren’t out like they used to be.
Leisure travel is booming in most places whereas commuter and work travel is down due to work from home.

 

[M803UYA]

Cornwall's network was pre-pandemic, Post-pandemic who knows? All of the tendered work has gone to another company so they have nothing to fall back on, they've also been doing a lot of risky expansions into Exeter, Dartmoor, Exmoor which could suggest they are looking to find alternative income? Even Bristol which is one of First's jewels has been decimated post Covid.

A director of First South West regularly posts on here and has made clear there was no overall loss from not winning the tendered services in Cornwall - they replaced the lost turnover with increased school/college contract commitments and no driving staff were lost through the changes. So much so, Go Ahead had service delivery issues when starting their operations as driving staff didn't migrate to Plymouth Citybus. They got away with the worst of that as they took over at the end of March 2020. Had the country not been in lockdown the issues would have been much worse.
The Exeter, Dartmoor and Exmoor operations were lower risk ventures, making use of idle off peak vehicles, so overall, you'd have some income from that work backing up the contract mileage. Some have worked, others not.