Unlikely as the contracts are bid for quite low. Operators that I have spoken to who work for the West Midlands area, they were under Abellio/Transport UK Group and are about to be under Stagecoach and they have all said the new pay rates from Stagecoach are shocking. Similarly operators who have done Avanti work were under CMAC and now they have moved to First Travel Solutions and they have all said that FTS rates are shocking in comparison to what it was. They are forced to cut corners or only take on First work where it links up to another job somewhere.
Yes but the thing is most Arriva coordinators are clueless or don't turn up. I know a number of coordinators for other operators who have had to teach Arriva staff how to do the job because they have been sent out on their second shift, on their own to stupidly big stations which are far larger than the person can safely handle. I know I can't say too much but if people heard just some of the stories with Arriva coordinator, their ability to source staff is not as good as you may think. A huge amount of jacket fillers.
For blocks which are pre planned with a decent amount of notice don't go as badly. It goes sour in some specific areas where PSVAR compliance is an issue and in some cases, it's lack of notice from the TOC about the work (until you work in the provision of rail replacement, you don't understand how often TOCs 'forget to request buses'). For emergency buses, that is very difficult as it seems that no one likes to answer the phone and with coach companies the way they are, they don't tend to have any slack. Drivers hours are all locked in from about the week before with almost no potential for any additional work. That is before you consider the fact many coach operators seem to not want to answer the phones outside of office hours and almost no one has spare drivers just waiting for work. As I say, operators are pretty tight on driving hours and so even a 2 hour emergency job in the evening can mess up a school contract the next day.
As for the current supplier list, this may be useful to some people
Avanti West Coast | First Travel Solutions |
C2C | EnsignBus (Is this now under FTS now that Ensign has been taken over?) |
Chiltern | Stagecoach (Changed a few months ago) |
Cross Country | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
East Midlands Railway | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
Govia Thameslink Railway | Currently GoAhead, Moving to Abellio/Transport UK Group in April 2023 |
Grand Central | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
Great Western Railway | First Travel Solutions |
Hull Trains | First Travel Solutions |
LNER | Stagecoach |
Lumo | First Travel Solutions |
Merseyrail | Arriva Merseyside |
Northern | Arriva Road Transport Solutions |
Scotrail | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
Southeastern | |
South Western Railway | First Travel Solutions |
Trans Pennine Express | First Travel Solutions |
Transport for Wales | Abellio/Transport UK Group |
West Midlands Railway | Previously Abellio/Transport UK Group, just transferred to Stagecoach |