About Stagecoach North East

Key facts May 2018 – April 2019

• Over 61 million passenger journeys were made on Stagecoach North East buses
• Over 19 million miles operated across the North East
• 1,337 staff employed across six Stagecoach North East depots
• 437 buses across Newcastle, South Shields, Sunderland, Hartlepool and Teesside
• 99.5% reliability 
• 91.9% punctuality 

 

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Our people

We are a major employer in the local economy, with 1,337 employees, of whom 1,057 are drivers, 179 are engineers and 101 are administration and managerial staff. The majority of our employees live within the local communities we serve.

Over the past year, 75 new drivers were trained to become PCV licence holders. In total, 109 drivers (including existing licence holders, new recruits and transfers) have been placed in our local depots. Our drivers also attend certified classroom courses during the year to maintain their Driver Qualification Card, which requires them to maintain and improve their skills through regular training programmes.

Many of our employees have shown impressive commitment and loyalty to Stagecoach. This year, 79 long-serving employees were acknowledged after accumulating an impressive 2,370 years of service between them, and each one was recognised for their prolonged hard work and commitment over the years at a celebration dinner and awards ceremony.

Our customers

Our customers made a total of over 61 million journeys on our buses throughout the year. During that period, we received 2552 complaints, the equivalent of one complaint for every 24,000 passenger journeys.

Our local Customer Communications team strives to maintain and improve customer relations via social media, telephone, email and web. These channels are used as platforms from which to engage our customer base in both promotional and operational activities, helping to streamline the customer experience and provide proactive and reactive support wherever possible.

Stagecoach North East continues to demonstrate its commitment to making bus travel more attractive and accessible for young people in the region. Following the successful introduction of the £1 single fare for Under 19s, the ‘VIP’ product range has grown steadily and contributes significantly to the increasing volume of bus passengers in the region.

In August 2018, Stagecoach North East invited families in Tyne & Wear to leave the car at home and benefit from exceptional value when travelling together, with the introduction of the Family dayrider PLUS ticket. The ticket offers a great incentive to make the most of public transport while taking in the wide variety of visitor attractions available in our local towns and cities. The initiative has now been rolled out across Teesside and in Hartlepool.

November 2018 marked the roll-out of a set of Group-wide initiatives designed to remove barriers to bus travel and encourage modal shift. The north east team introduced a standardised fare structure for bus journeys in Hartlepool, with the new one-price ‘Hartlepool Anywhere’ ticket allowing passengers to travel anywhere within the town for £1.80 (or £1 for under 19s).

Our environment 

Our buses

We operate a fleet of 437 buses and have invested millions in new buses for local areas over the last couple of years, all of which are fully accessible and meet the latest Euro emission standards. With newer buses featuring USB charging points, a total of 210 buses in the North East are now also fitted with free WI-FI for the convenience of our customers.

Stagecoach North East places the utmost importance on vehicle presentation and our local teams are tireless in their efforts to maintain high standards of cleanliness for customers, both on-board and externally.

 

Our services

We operated over 19 million miles over the last year and passengers made over 61 million journeys.

The key measures of our performance are the reliability and punctuality of those journeys and, in the past year, we operated 99.5% of our scheduled services. Of those, 0.5% did not operate, 0.06% was due to factors within our control, such as driver and vehicle allocation, and 0.44% was due to factors out of our control such as bad weather, road closures and traffic congestion. We monitor our services for punctuality and, in the past year, our AVL system tracked 99% of all scheduled journeys. Despite another year of an exceptional number of work schemes across the region, of these, 92% operated within 5 minutes of their scheduled time. We continue to seek improvements both through rescheduling services and discussions with our local highway authorities.

In April 2019, Stagecoach North East unveiled a new bus route to serve the North Tyneside coastline, operating between North Shields Ferry and Whitley Bay. ‘The Seasider’ takes in some of the borough’s top tourist attractions and leisure facilities and is proving to be a significant draw for residents and visitors, from the north east and further afield.

Stagecoach North East’s X24 express service between Sunderland and Newcastle via Doxford International has enjoyed considerable growth, with passenger numbers over the last 12 months increasing at an average of 19% year on year.

 

Investments

Contactless, smart ticketing and the Stagecoach Bus app offer yet more convenience to customers and contribute to reducing dwell times which speeds up customer journeys. The first bus company in the group to introduce contactless payments across its entire fleet, the technology at Stagecoach North East now captures 32.3% of our on-bus sales while contactless transactions reached a value of over £10million in March 2019.

The Stagecoach Bus app offers a simple journey planning tool which uses interactive maps and the smartphone GPS system to help customers identify their nearest bus stop, and the most suitable bus service for their journey requirements. Passengers can also find out information on journey duration, fares and live running times to check the status of their journey before catching the bus. In addition, the app enables customers to pinpoint their location during their journey, helping them determine where they are on the route at any one time, how far they are from their destination and when to get off the bus, which is particularly beneficial to key disability groups and those who are not regular bus users.

 

Our community

In November 2018, Stagecoach North East won Bronze in the ‘Bus and the Community’ category of the UK Bus Awards 2018, following its successful fundraising efforts during the previous Christmas period which saw over £20,000 collected on-board for local charities.

Subsequently, during Christmas 2018/19, our renewed fundraising initiative led by driving staff in the north east and delivered by the hard, collaborative work of key departments within the company, raised an outstanding £30,000 for local charities, representing a year on year improvement of circa £10,000. Over the past three years alone, the cumulative total of Stagecoach North East’s Christmas fundraisers has reached over £80,000.

In April 2019, Stagecoach North East further demonstrated its commitment to local communities with the commencement of a long-term partnership with The Chronicle Sunshine Fund, a Newcastle-based charity
which raises funds for local children and families affected by disabilities. The partnership aims to raise wider awareness of the charity’s great work using on-board promotional space, helping Sunshine Fund to reach more families in need throughout the region.

In partnership with Newcastle United’s Foundation, Stagecoach North East provided hundreds of free travel passes for young participants. This initiative helped them to reach the charity’s Summer programme, which aims to improve employability in tandem with the NE1 Works initiative and the ongoing work of National Citizen Service.

Recently the company also collaborated directly with National Citizen Service in an additional bid to boost career opportunities for local young people. NCS participants are now guaranteed first interviews for the award-winning Stagecoach apprenticeship scheme. Stagecoach North East currently employs a total of 14 engineering apprentices from within its local communities.

Meet some of our team

Head Office:

Depots: