STAGECOACH CELEBRATES UK COACH AWARDS SUCCESS

Stagecoach’s coach operations came out on top at the 2019 UK Coach Awards as the company scooped five gold awards.

Stagecoach East Scotland, Scottish Citylink and Stagecoach North Scotland were the big winners on the night with Stagecoach’s coach operations receiving praise for their approach to innovation, customer service, marketing, driving standards and engineering.

Stagecoach East Scotland scooped three gold awards at the Blackpool ceremony. The company’s Express City Connect Network, which operates across Fife and into Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow, was awarded top prize in the Top Express Operation category, Facilities such as leather seats, on board toilets, power sockets, air conditioning and free wifi have helped make the services an attractive alternative to the car, achieving increased passenger numbers.

Stagecoach East Scotland’s approach to low floor coaches also won gold in the Making Coaches a Better Choice Award and gold in the Innovation Award, along with bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis Ltd, following a £5.2 million investment in 19 new coaches for its Express network which were designed in partnership with ADL and Bus Users Scotland to provide the best possible journey experience for customers with mobility issues. The ground-breaking design has a flat floor saloon area covering the front half of the vehicle with a large wheelchair space as well as at-seat lights and 'stop' buttons. The new vehicles have received positive feedback from customers and passenger numbers have risen on the routes they operate on.

Scottish Citylink – a joint venture between Stagecoach and transport group Comfort DelGro - won gold in the Customer Service and Support Staff Award for the work of its Operations Control team which operates round the clock to keep the Scottish Citylink and entire UK megabus.com networks running as scheduled. The team uses teamwork, thinking outside the box, initiative and problem solving skills on a daily basis to help get passengers to their destination on schedule.

Stagecoach North Scotland’s Ward Barnes – who covers the company’s Moray operations - won the gold award in the Engineer of the Year category. He was praised for his dedication to the transport industry over 44 years and for implementing positive change within the Elgin and Macduff depots over the past three years to improve vehicle reliability.

In addition, Scottish Citylink won silver in the Top Express Operation category and bronze in the Marketing Excellence category, while East Scotland scooped silver in the Marketing Excellence category and Rennies Coaches driver Scott Seath won the bronze award in the Top UK Coach Driver category.

Robert Andrew, Stagecoach UK Bus Managing Director for Scotland, said: “Coaches are an essential part of UK life and provide a good value, reliable and high quality link to help connect people across the country with their friends, family, work and leisure activities.

“It’s fantastic that so many of our coach operations have been recognised at these awards and is a real credit to the hard work that our employees do to ensure we deliver the kind of services that our customers want.

“I’d like to congratulate all of our winners and finalists and we look forward to making even more improvements to further drive up the standard of coach travel for our customers in the future.”

The 11th annual UK Coach Awards were held in Blackpool on Thursday 2 May.

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