It’s something that I was almost not surprised about, but at the same time hoped would never happen. Many people have contacted me on Facebook and Twitter to tell me that the Directors at Yellow Buses have announced they are calling in the Administrators.
The company has been in various stages of ownership over the 120 years it has been operating. Bournemouth Corporation, originally owned by Bournemouth Council ran trams and then buses, which then became an arms length private limited company at deregulation in 1985. It became part of Transdev in 2005 and then RATP Group before being independent in the management buy-out 2019.
Service Issues
Even before the management buy-out, consumer confidence in Yellow Buses was damaged by the network revisions of 2018 when long running numbered services were replaced with routes including the P-numbered services (denoting Christchurch Priory) to Poole, U for Bournemouth University and the like.
Upgrades and back-of-house developments following the management buyout also added to the complaints of customers started to lead to annual losses into millions of pounds, but that might have been recoverable if the COVID Pandemic was not looming around the corner.
morebus was probably rubbing it’s hands together and saw the vultures circling as they first won a Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council contract to replace a commercial Yellow Buses service in Christchurch, Burton and Bransgore.
morebus have also made recent changes to their m1 service to Castlepoint and the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and Yellow Buses simply threw in the towel with the 3 and 3x, merging the two and extending it to Poole Hospital.
Yellow Buses Statement
From the statement from Yellow Buses (shown in full here) it does say that they were in talks with another larger operator in terms of a merger with another operator.
I am not going to proffer speculation as there are few “larger operators”. To be fair Yellow Buses has touched elbows with a number over the years with a number of different parent groups and other operators. Hopefully the final stages they are in will bear fruit.
In the very short term though, it does not look like the shutters are coming down over the summer holidays, so enjoy Buster’s open toppers and a splash of yellow before it’s gone.
(I suppose I had better make time to go get some photos too)