According to the study published by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), there was a decline of UK bus and coach by -22.1% in Q3 this year. The major reason behind this the reintroducing of lockdowns in UK during h autumn, as Coronavirus continued to create rage in the country. People stayed off road throughout the years bring huge loss to minibus and coaches, as there was low ridership.
Lockdown and social distancing measures across the UK affected the overall ridership. This has resulted in the date shortfall of 1,210 units down to 2,775 vehicles.
Commenting on the situation, SMMT Chief Executive, Mike Hawes said: “The ongoing impact of coronavirus on bus ridership has resulted in another difficult quarter for the suffering bus and coach sector. If we are to see more of the latest, greenest passenger vehicles join British roads and ensure we have a public transport system fit for the future, we need to rebuild operators’ confidence and ability to invest in their fleets. This must start with the delivery of promised Government funding for buses earlier in the year.”
The registrations for single-deck buses and coaches fared the worse than other public transport options. Since the Covid lockdown began, there was a decline of 50%, which is equivalent to around 524 million fewer passenger journey. Regions like South East, North West, South West, West Midlands and Scotland faced the worst.
Here is basic picture of the down sales-
- New bus and coach market are still facing the loss due to pandemic, and more than half of vehicle are off-road.
- Huge drop in the registrations by double-digit, equally the registration was down of minibus and single-deck.
The Brink Business during Pandemic
Earlier in September, there were reports that more than 1000 family-running coach buses were facing bankruptcy. They were totally under loss. It is estimated that more than 24,000 people employing in the mini-bus and coach will go out of the job by April 2021, in case of no financial help.
The confederation of Passenger Transport said, “Businesses across all sectors — including the coach industry — have had access to our generous and wide-ranging package of support,” it said. “We’ve also introduced a package of other support measures, including bounce back loans, tax deferrals, business rates holidays and more than £10bn of grants.”
In the month of August, the Department for Education allocated 40m to mini-bus and other coaches. However, many coaches were overlooked.
Candice Mason, the owner of Masons Coaches in Hertfordshire town of Tring said, she borrowed more than 1.3m in the past three years. Now she estimated that she would need at least 180,000 to keep her business going. “We have coaches that were valued at £170,000 last year that are now worth £50,000. If we go under, I will have to make up the difference myself with the finance company.” Jenna Rush, who owns the North East Coach Travel says, government’s new job support scheme “does not help us at all” and said she would be “making redundancies if no work comes in by November.”