INTERVIEW
Stagecoach was mired in controversy — meet the woman shaking things up
Claire Miles’s background is in mathematical modelling for the military. Now she aims to solve the problems of the bus industry
Oliver Gill
Sunday December 24 2023, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Trying to prove her doubters wrong seems to be in Claire Miles’s DNA. “When I was at school, my career advice was absolutely shocking. I was told I should be a hairdresser or a nurse,” she says. “And I was, like: ‘Er, no’.”
The 51-year-old recently climbed into the metaphorical driving seat at Stagecoach, arguably the best-known name in Britain’s traditionally blokey transport sector. Despite putting on the obligatory hi-vis vest, her sharp blue suit and high heels sets her apart from the bus drivers enjoying their lunch as we walk through the mess hall at the Stagecoach bus depot in Sharston, south Manchester.
Her eclectic career has seen her working in war games for the military and crunching numbers. Her achievements span finance and energy. Even so, buses seem an unusual choice — and especially Stagecoach, a company that comes with cultural and political baggage.
The brainchild of Perth siblings Sir Brian Souter and Dame Ann Gloag, Stagecoach was a champion of Thatcherite reforms that deregulated the bus market in the early 1980s. But while Stagecoach went from strength to strength on the road, the company was dogged by controversy off it.
Souter and Gloag sold their remaining shareslast year as part of a £595 million take-private deal by German infrastructure fund DWS.
Souter has enraged gay rights and pro-choice campaigners alike over the years. In 2000, the tycoon opposed the abolition of laws in Scotland that prohibited “intentionally promoting homosexuality”, giving £1 million to the cause.
He defends his views on religious grounds but shrugging off criticism has proved difficult. In 2019, for instance, pressure from gay rights campaigners forced the Turner Prize to end a sponsorship deal with Stagecoach a day after it was announced.
In February this year, Souter hit the headlines by condemning late-term abortions, likening terminations up until birth for foetuses with serious anomalies to the biblical slaughter of the innocents by King Herod.
Gloag is no stranger to controversy either. Alongside her husband, David McCleary, and two other family members, she faces
charges of people trafficking. In July she issued a statement that “strongly disputes the malicious allegations” and vowed to “vigorously defend herself and the work of her foundation”.
Miles, in the clearest message of our conversation, wants to draw a line under Stagecoach’s participation in culture wars under Souter and Gloag. “They are nowhere near the business,” she says. “They had a massive impact on the business reputation and created a legacy for us.
“I am absolutely determined, going forward, that we will show up as a different type of company. Non-political. Non-judgmental. Embracing openness and diversity. All of that is really important to me and that is how I will run the business.”
Has she spoken to Souter or Gloag since joining Stagecoach nearly three months ago? “No,” is the curt response.
Indeed, she and the company have wasted no time in creating a more modern feeling culture lately
Stagecoach has increased the number of female drivers. In 2018 the company was broadly in line with of national average of 8.6 per cent. “Eleven per cent of our drivers are female,” says Miles. “And yes, I do wish that was higher. But it does have this history and perception that it is a very blokey thing to do.
“As an organisation, we provide shifts that can work for mothers that need to take the kids to school and pick them up — we’ve got 10am till 2pm shifts.”
Stagecoach has worked with trade unions to set up a joint women’s committee to look at innovative working practices. Miles explains: “We are in the process of developing a policy for supporting women going through the menopause. If they need to take time off for appointments, or if they’re not feeling well. We’re one of the first companies to offer paid leave for staff who’ve gone through a miscarriage.”
Miles, who says she has little knowledge or experience of running a bus company, joins Stagecoach with the bus sector at a crossroads. Decades of deregulation are being put into reverse as metro mayors and local authorities tighten their grip on public transport provision.
Up until recently, bus companies outside London were largely free to run whatever routes they wanted. Unsurprisingly, they ran the services that generated the most fare income, often withdrawing from those that were more sparsely-used.
Under the “franchising model”, used by Transport for London since privatisation, a local authority can decide routes, fares, frequencies and vehicle standards and pay operators to run services on their behalf. Operators are paid a flat fee no matter how many passengers there are. That provides a stable income, but effectively caps its profit.
Bus franchising in Greater Manchester has been
a central policy for Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor for the region. The west of England, West Yorkshire and Cambridge
want to follow suit.
Stagecoach was one of two operators to challenge
Burnham’s franchising plans in a High Court case that ultimately failed. That was before Miles’s watch and it is another chapter of the company’s history on which she wants to turn the page.
“No matter what the local authority’s view is on how they want their bus services to be run — whether that’s through franchising, like is happening here in Manchester — we will work with it.
“There’ve been a lot of statements made in the past about where we want to operate and how. The reality is that we need to do what’s right for customers. And if franchising is the right answer for that, we’ll get on board with franchising.”
Her pragmatic approach would appear to chime with the attitude of DWS, Stagecoach’s new owner, which was spun out of Deutsche Bank in 2018. Like other infrastructure investors, DWS looks for the steady returns that the franchise model should deliver.
Another big change for the UK bus business also goes in Stagecoach’s favour: in areas outside London with no franchising system,
the government has capped fares at £2, subsidising the operator for the rest of the cost. This has driven up the number of people using its services without hitting its profit margins.
The cap was intended to get people back on buses after the Covid pandemic and seems to have worked: bus patronage in the first 11 days of December averaged 94 per cent of pre-pandemic levels, according to the Department for Transport. On every Sunday since April 16, passenger numbers are above pre-pandemic levels.
Rail and Tube usage, by comparison, remains at about 80 per cent of pre-Covid levels. Despite buses’ low profile in the public consciousness,
twice as many people use them than trains.
It is not all going in Miles’s favour, she insists: “There’s a lot to do. The future won’t be straightforward, I’m sure.”
Near the top of her priorities is overhauling the company’s fleet of 8,300 mainly diesel-powered buses. Stagecoach aims to be a
zero-emission operator by 2030 and there is a lot of catching up to do to hit that goal.
Capital expenditure ground to halt during Covid as plunging passenger numbers left bus operators relying on state aid to stay afloat. Investing in electric or hydrogen-electric powered buses was not a priority.
Now in her 12th week in the job, Miles has been on a tour of the country, visiting depots, speaking to many of the 24,000-strong workforce and their customers.
“It has been difficult to invest over the past few years. You can see it, the business hasn’t had investment for a while, so there is a lot to do with catching up and replenishing the fleet and getting into electrification,” she says.
Another challenge is finding people to drive buses. One result of Covid was that a significant number of drivers left their jobs. That trend was reinforced in 2021 when many more were snaffled by lorry companies desperate for people after a Brexit exodus of European HGV drivers. It left the bus sector 4,000 drivers short.
Miles says the industry’s HR teams still see the fallout. “The profile of the applicant has changed for many reasons. Typically people applying for the job have less driver experience. It takes longer to train them and get them to feel confident driving a bus.”
Born in Bishop Auckland, Co Durham, Miles moved to Skipton, Yorkshire, aged ten. In spite of her school’s questionable careers advice, she went to read maths and business at Aston University in Birmingham, sandwiched with a placement year as an auditor with the Audit Commission, now the National Audit Office, in Manchester.
She then studied mathematical modelling at the Royal Military College of Science in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, during which time she was an honorary lieutenant. “I studied the same maths I would have done elsewhere but in the format of war gaming, game theory and modelling trajectories of rockets,” she says.
During her postgraduate studies Miles went on to develop models to be used for automated loan decisions, one of which was subsequently used by Barclays in the mid-1990s.
Her first “proper” job was mortality modelling for Frizzell Insurance, the Bournemouth company that became part of LV. She then moved into managing credit card portfolios for GE Capital and then Santander before landing at British Gas. During her decade with the energy group, Miles oversaw its energy-efficiency arm and led the rollout of its Hive smart meters. After British Gas, Miles was chief executive of Yell, the online directory.
Since leaving college Miles has lived in Twickenham, southwest London. She juggles her Stagecoach job and a non-executive directorship at waste company Biffa with being a single mother. She has sons aged 11 and 14 and two spaniels (also male) to look after.
“It’s four of them covered in mud all the time,” she says. “I spend a lot of time cleaning.”
She adds: “I’ve spent all my life in male-dominated environments. From studying maths to actuarial work, and then running a business that has frontline teams of engineers. It’s never been a problem for me.”
If only those school careers advisers could hear her now.
The Life of Claire Miles
Born: September 3, 1972
Status: divorced, two sons aged 14 and 11 — two spaniels
School: Skipton Girls High School
University: Aston, BSc maths & business. Cranfield, MSC mathematical modelling
First job: retail assistant in a builders’ merchant on Saturdays, selling bricks and pipework with zero knowledge!
Home: Twickenham, southwest London
Car: black Range Rover Sport, bought second-hand
Favourite book: Man on Wire by Philippe Petit
Drink: Ruinart champagne or Peroni
Film: Goodfellas
Music: all kinds from Elvis Presley to Dolly Parton, the Beatles and Eminem. “I love introducing my boys to rock legends with many Saturday mornings spent dancing in the kitchen”
Gadget: Dualit hand blender to make smoothies for my kids as the best way to get vitamins into them
Last holiday: three weeks, coast-to-coast in Canada with my boys
Working day
The Stagecoach boss is up at 5am to walk the dogs and if she is working in London this is followed by a 5k run on the treadmill; otherwise she heads to Euston to catch a train to one of Stagecoach’s regions. Typically she meets her teams in the depots where the customer and employee experience comes to life.
Downtime
Weekends are normally spent with her boys and dogs, walking, homework, football matches and training sessions. Whenever possible they travel for weekends away
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