National Bus Company (UK)

The National Bus Company (NBC) was a nationalised bus company that operated in England and Wales between 1969 and 1988. NBC did not run buses itself, but was the owner of a number of regional subsidiary bus operating companies.

History

Background

Following the Labour Party victory at the 1966 General Election, Barbara Castle was appointed Minister for Transport. Castle immediately ordered a review of public transport, with a view to formulating a new transport policy.

Among the issues to be tackled were the ownership and operation of bus services, which were rapidly losing patronage and profitability due to increased prevalence of private motor cars. The state owned a considerable proportion of scheduled bus operators outside the major cities, having obtained the Tilling Group companies in 1948 as a byproduct of nationalising the railways. The Tilling Group was subsequently placed under the ownership of the nationalised Transport Holding Company (THC). London Transport was also nationalised in 1948 and others voluntarily acquiesced, the last being Red & White in 1950. When the Labour Party suddenly lost power to the Conservatives in 1951, the nationalization programme remained unfinished.

Castle proposed forming regional transport authorities, which would take over the THC subsidiaries and municipal transport undertakings in their area, and would also have the power to acquire private bus operators. However, in November 1967 British Electric Traction (BET) unexpectedly offered to sell its bus operations to the government. BET, who had been the only major private bus operating group, received £35 million for its 25 provincial bus companies and 11,300 vehicles. The deal meant that the state or municipal bus operators now operated some 90% of scheduled bus services in England and Wales. Instead of forming the regional authorities, the government published a white paper proposing the merger of the THC and BET organisations into a single National Bus Company.

The recommendations of the White Paper formed part of the Transport Act 1968. The 1968 Act also reorganised the already nationalised bus operation in Scotland, where subsidiaries formed the Scottish Bus Group.

Formation

The National Bus Company was formed on 1 January 1969.National Bus Company
''Commercial Motor'' 3 January 1969 page 27

In 1970, the company was enlarged when it acquired the country area buses of London Transport (as London Country Bus Services), the bus operations of the county boroughs of Exeter and Luton, and the Gosport & Fareham Omnibus Company, trading under the name of Provincial.

Buses were operated by locally managed subsidiary companies, with their own fleetnames and liveries. In the early years of the company, there was some rationalisation, generally leading to the amalgamation of operators into larger units and the transfer of areas between them. One was the merging of Aldershot & District with Thames Valley on 1 January 1972. Another example was the transfer of the 'land-locked' Trowbridge operations from Western National to Bristol Omnibus in 1970.

Corporate identity

Following the appointment of Fred Wood as chairman in 1972, the National Bus Company introduced a corporate identity designed by Norman Wilson, who had previously designed logos for Wood's Croda International chemical company. Henceforth, its coaches were branded as National Travel and painted in unrelieved white, with the NBC logo and the 'NATIONAL' name in alternate red & blue letters. The services were rebranded as National Express soon afterwards. The addition of blue and white stripes appeared in 1978. National Travel was the country's first attempt at a uniformly marketable express network, which superseded Associated Motorways and the plethora of other services provided by individual NBC subsidiaries. The coaches were managed by a few areas and included travel agent booking offices based at major bus stations. A hub and spoke system operated with the main hub at Cheltenham.

Around the same time, the company launched a wide number of UK holiday services under the banner "National Holidays". This brand and its travel agent booking offices existed until the mid-1990s, when the coach holiday division closed.

The National Express overseas travel business was re-launched under the name Eurolines: this brand now operates services from the UK across Europe, booked through the main National Express website.

In the 1970s all local service buses adopted a uniform design, generally in either leaf green or poppy red, initially with white relief, and bearing the company fleetname in white Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface with the new NBC "double-N" arrow logo. There were, however, exceptions: buses operating in the area of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive became yellow in a similar fashion to the PTE's own fleet but to the NBC design; some buses operating within West Yorkshire were liveried in WYPTE verona green and cream; Jones (Aberbeeg) and Midland General both liveried in blue until 1980, and the Northern General subsidiary, Sunderland District, also retained blue for a short period.

Area of operation

Although NBC operated throughout England and Wales, it was not a monopoly. Services were provided by London Transport in Greater London, the fleets of the municipal bus companies and passenger transport executives, and by independent operators in some rural areas and a few small towns.

Bus manufacture

The NBC inherited from the Transport Holding Company 75% shareholdings in chassis manufacturer Bristol Commercial Vehicles and body builder Eastern Coach Works. In 1969 NBC formed a joint venture with British Leyland (who owned the other 25% of Bristol and ECW), by means of which British Leyland became a 50% owner of the NBC's manufacturing companies. The joint venture designed and built a new single-deck bus, the Leyland National. The first was delivered in 1972, and it remained in production until 1986. The National was also available to other bus operators. In 1982 NBC sold its 50% interest in the joint venture (including Bristol and ECW) to British Leyland.

Service reforms

IIn the late 1970’s and early 1980’s services were reviewed under a process known within instigator Midland Red as the Viable Network Project and subsequently more generally as the "Market Analysis Project" (MAP). This followed on from the West Oxfordshire Market Analysis Project conducted in 1975 by the newly formed Public Transport Unit of Oxfordshire County Council. With an all-county remit Oxfordshire included services from the Banbury area running into the West Oxfordshire survey area. Having assisted in the programme and been fully informed as to the findings, the Midland Red Area Manager (Brian Barrett) was able to recommend that the programme should be extended elsewhere within National Bus Company. Conscious of the very limited information on their market (their passengers), NBC extended the programme throughout the areas served by the subsidiary Companies. Each company carefully considered its existing and potential new demands, surveyed both on and off bus, and recast local networks to reflect the results, indicating to local authorities those services requiring subsidy. As part of the MAP local area identities were invariably introduced, with new fleet names applied to buses, bus stops, timetables and publicity. The process culminated in the splitting of several larger NBC subsidiaries.

Deregulation and privatisation

From 1986, bus services in the UK were deregulated and progressively privatised, with the remaining larger companies forcibly broken up.

NBC was divided into 70 units, with the first sale being of National Holidays to Pleasurama in July 1986. The last sale was completed in April 1988.NBC sale is completed with London Country NE
''Commercial Motor'' 7 April 1988 page 16

The sales spawned a renewed interest in individual liveries and the "double-N" logo disappeared. However, it was kept by National Express when it was sold to their management and continued to be used until 2003, when the NBC logo finally disappeared in favour of a new logo, since replaced in 2007. Most local companies passed from state control to management buyouts. The independence of many however, was short lived, as they were acquired by the emerging large private bus groups, represented today by:
*Abellio
*Arriva

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