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.
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; it had obtained the Tilling Group companies in 1948 as a consequence of nationalising the railways, all of which had substantial shareholdings in the Tilling Group, having previously merged into it their own bus operations. 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 was Red & White in 1950. When the Labour Party suddenly lost power to the Conservatives in 1951, the nationalisation programme remained unfinished.
Castle proposed forming regional transport authorities, which would take over the THC subsidiaries and municipal transport undertakings in their area; it 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, which had been the only major private bus operating group, received ã35 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; this also reorganised the already nationalised bus operation in Scotland, where subsidiaries formed the Scottish Bus Group.
The National Bus Company was formed on 1 January 1969.
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.
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 worked with Wood to reshape the identity of the Croda International chemical company. The company's coaches, which previously carried the traditional colours of local subsidiaries, were rebranded as National; they were painted in unrelieved white, with the NBC logo and the 'NATIONAL' name in alternate red & blue letters using a bespoke typeface. The 'white coach' played a prominent part in changing the image of coach travel, taking advantage of the new national motorway network to offer a consistent national service. 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 was closed.
The National Express overseas travel business was relaunched 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 under Norman Wilson's corporate identity scheme, generally in either leaf green or poppy red, with white relief. All vehicles bore the local company fleetname in white, in the bespoke National lettering/Wilson National typeface designed by Wilson and based on Akzidenz-Grotesk. The fleetname was aligned with Wilson's new NBC symbol, an italicised N and its shadow forming an arrow, with the dimensions and positions precisely defined in Wilson's corporate identity manuals of 1972 and 1976. Though around 95 per cent of the company's buses appeared in one of the two standard colours, there were exceptions. Buses operating in the area of the Tyne and Wear Passenger Transport Executive used yellow in a similar fashion to the PTE's own fleet, but to the NBC specifications for layout and colour; some buses operating within West Yorkshire were liveried in WYPTE verona green and cream; Jones (Aberbeeg) was liveried in blue; and local subsidiaries East Yorkshire, Midland General and the Northern General subsidiary, Sunderland District, also retained blue for short periods.
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.
The NBC inherited 75% shareholdings in chassis manufacturer Bristol Commercial Vehicles and body builder Eastern Coach Works (ECW) from the Transport Holding Company. In 1969, NBC formed a joint venture with British Leyland (which owned the other 25% of Bristol and ECW); 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; it 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.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, 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; they indicated 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.
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.
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; it was later 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:
The company was dissolved on 1 April 1991 by the (SI 1991/510).
The original bus and coach operating subsidiaries of the National Bus Company in 1969 and 1970 were:
In addition, another NBC subsidiary, Amalgamated Passenger Transport Ltd, inherited the former British Railways/THC shareholdings in several further Joint Omnibus Committees (JOC) in Yorkshire. These comprised Halifax JOC and Todmorden JOC (merged to form Calderdale JOC in 1971), Huddersfield JOC, and Sheffield JOC.
During its early years, NBC pursued a policy of merging smaller subsidiaries to form larger regional companies. At the same time, some depots were transferred between subsidiaries to reduce overlap between operating territories. In addition to those businesses inherited from the Transport Holding Company, NBC took over the municipal bus operations in Exeter and Luton during 1970, with these operations being absorbed by Devon General and United Counties respectively; the country area services of London Transport also passed to NBC in 1970 as London Country.
Notable independent operators acquired during this period included Jones of Aberbeeg, Venture of Consett, Provincial of Fareham and Wessex of Bristol, which were (at least initially) retained as subsidiaries. In 1974, the coach-only subsidiaries consolidated into four National Travel companies, while a fifth was established to take over another independent coach operator, Don Everall of Wolverhampton.
On the other hand, the NBC shareholdings in Huddersfield and Sheffield JOCs were sold to the respective local authorities in 1969, and most of Hebble's bus operations passed to the jointly owned Halifax JOC during 1970. The 1968 Transport Act gave the new passenger transport executives the right to purchase any bus operations within their territories, including those of the National Bus Company. Not all of the PTEs chose to exercise this power but, on 1 January 1972, SELNEC PTE purchased the majority of North Western Road Car, and in 1973 the services of Midland Red within the West Midlands PTE passed to that executive. In 1974, the remaining NBC interest in Calderdale JOC was acquired by the newly-formed West Yorkshire PTE.
By 1978, the following bus operating companies existed:
In 1981, Midland Red, weakened by losing its core area, was broken into six smaller operating companies. Most of the National Travel companies were closed down in the mid-1980s, with coaches mainly going to local bus companies. Wessex National was formed from part of National Travel South West, and Pilgrim Coaches from part of National Travel West.
In preparation for the introduction of deregulation in 1986, and for privatisation soon after, many of the companies were broken up into smaller units. In some cases, the names of earlier companies â such as Wilts & Dorset or North Western â were revived, although often with quite different areas from their namesakes.
Two additional non-bus-operating subsidiaries were also disposed of in 1988:
The Scarborough operations of United Automobile Services passed to East Yorkshire Motor Services in September 1986.