A couple of conversations I've had recently might be of interest:
- There have been drivers still on furlough up to this point, and it transpires that when those drivers were brought off furlough, to bring services up to last 10-20 duties, some of these handed in their notice
- If you're a new trainee waiting on your provisional PCV, and you've finished the initial set of classroom / route-learning days, you're then in the position of being unable to work, and (more importantly) unable to progress off of the training wage, and possibly being suspended until that licence arrives. If you've been waiting a month or two for this, you might well find other employment in the interim. Currently the DVLA wait is apparently 2 weeks (down from 9-12), but add a week for postage and faff, and it will still really bite.
- Even without the above, the DVLA issue is still just delaying your pipeline of new drivers
- Someone else has already mentioned the issue of getting tests, too, if you don't have an examiner on staff
- There's still a definite preference for trainees over experience, for better or worse (not getting into this argument now), so some operators' 'pipelines' of new drivers are disproportionately trainees.
- While most renewals don't take a driver off the road, some do, and those that do are usually related to medicals, and getting a medical from your GP has proven challenging. With the DVSA still only just processing July's renewals, that will put some drivers in a very difficult position
- Those golden handshakes from supermarkets, ports, hauliers, etc. are certainly proving tempting to those that can adjust their lifestyles...
- ...but bear in mind that the bus drivers' Ts&Cs mean lots of long days, split shifts, short rest, few weekends, etc... so often the new role is actually preferable, with better pay and conditions even excluding the handshake.
Self-isolation is much less of an issue since the Aug. 19 change in guidance for those who are doubly vaccinated, and vaccine uptake amongst all staff - not just drivers - has been relatively high. It's still going to be a problem for some individuals, but it's much less of a problem than the above.
There's also been differing guidance on how operators should be scheduling their service in this uncertainty: if you schedule to driver availability, week-to-week, you may bring your balance of commercial-vs-supported mileage down to the point where your funding package needs to go back to DfT & Treasury for approval. Recently the guidance has been to schedule your normal, planned service, as if you had a full establishment of drivers: that way you don't change what you've planned (and agreed funding for), but you have to take the hit on the performance side, with passengers and ultimately the DVSA. The DVSA will be aware that this is the guidance, but will be (rightly) faced with the weight of passenger opinion about inaccurate printed timetables, overwhelming lateness, shrinking networks, dropping frequencies, lifeline buses being late / lost, and a generally poor experience for those "coming back to bus".
It's a poor situation to being but as others have alluded in this thread, it's simply a perfect storm hitting the industry's areas of weakness, and uncovering them, all at once.
In some respects there is some positivity: if you're able to employ, then your pipeline will replace what you've lost. Passenger numbers are returning, and funding packages are aiming to protect and strengthen services. So long term, there's some confidence. But if PCV driving remains as unattractive in the light of the rest of the employment market, or the pool of employees dwindles further, operators and passengers are facing a tough winter.
London is a very different kettle of fish with a very different labour market. Not saying it's going to be unscathed, but the operators are larger, better resourced, and used to being insulated by contracts from uncertainty: the pain there will likely take a different shape, likely in the form of TfL funding.
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