Bristol annual report 2014 15

ANNUAL REPORT FIRST WEST OF ENGLAND

A FOCUS ON BRISTOL, WESTON-SUPER-MARE & THE MENDIPS

2014 /2015

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I am really proud to introduce this annual report which is intended to provide some insight into the things we have been doing in and around over the past year.

I joined First as Managing Director of First West of England in October 2014. What a year it has been!

First West of England employs about 1900 people and operates almost 600 buses across the area known as the West of England, comprised of Bristol, Bath, Wells and Weston-super-Mare and also stretching over the border to West Wiltshire.

First Bristol is part of this operation, with two main depots, at Lawrence Hill and Hengrove as well as a bus station at Marlborough Street in the centre of the city.

2015 has been the Bristol European Green Capital Year and this has been a huge success in its own right. Alongside our colleagues at Great Western Railway, we have been delighted to be an official partner of Bristol Green Capital 2015 - helping to deliver the green message to local people across our area.

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Bristol Green Capital 2015 hasn’t just been about displaying a logo on the side of our buses, it shows our commitment to the future of our city and its people. As part of Green Capital we have trialled a Bio-Methane powered gas bus (the Bio Bus) to huge public acclaim, we have helped to educate primary school children about sustainable travel solutions, held events to promote greener travel methods and worked with many stakeholders across the city to plan a long term sustainable transport vision for Bristol as part of a city that people want to live in.

I hope you enjoy reading our brief report and please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

JAMES FREEMAN MANAGING DIRECTOR FIRST WEST OF ENGLAND

56 million attracting more customers Bus travel in Bristol has never been more popular.

Two years ago we introduced a radical fare reduction initiative called Fairer Fares. This entailed a complete re-design of our entire fare structure and, for the majority of our customers, it meant a significant reduction in the cost of bus travel. Fairer Fares was a huge success and prompted growth of around 20% in the use of many city services in Bristol and this growth continues.

This rise in the number of passengers is really good news not just for First in Bristol but for the city generally, because encouraging people to swap their cars for the bus helps to reduce congestion and pollution.

Between April 2014 and March 2015 we carried 56 million people who travelled 24 million miles with this number set to rise during the next financial year.

£13 million invested in brand new vehicles FirstGroup invested £13m in 59 brand new buses for Bristol this year. These double deck buses are state of the art and all meet Euro 6 environmental specifications.

The first of these new buses entered service in August and they have proved popular with both our passengers and our drivers. They are a significant improvement on the older single deck buses they replaced and are up to 14 times cleaner in emissions terms. All the new vehicles are equipped with leather seats, WiFi, next stop announcements as well as featuring a re-designed interior layout making it easier for people in wheelchairs and those with push chairs to travel by bus.

Thanks to the rising passenger numbers on many Bristol bus routes single deck buses are now just too small. We have been able to bring in more than forty double-deckers from other parts of First Bus around the country to replace these single deckers, significantly increasing the capacity on these services.

focus on customer satisfaction We aim to provide every customer who boards one of our buses with excellent customer service.

In recent years we have renewed our focus on customer service, which is reflected in the training we provide our drivers. We are always looking to reward those drivers that demonstrate good customer service. In fact we have this year run a six month award scheme called ‘Cheers Drive’.

The scheme, named after the popular Bristolian as a thank you to their bus driver, was devised in association with Destination Bristol and Bristol Shopping Quarter. Members of the public could nominate a driver whom they think is particularly worthy of accolade and each month the winning driver has received £100 in shopping vouchers and has become a nominee for the Bristol Gold Star Bus Driver Award. This was announced at the Bristol Post Goldstar Awards ceremony in December - the person nominating the driver also wins a free months travel! This has been a great success, with hundreds of nominations received. *Passenger Focus - Bus Passenger Survey Results (2014)

1200 staff top 10 private sector employers We employ around 1,200 people in Bristol, making us one of the city’s more significant employers, and this number continues to grow. As a result of passenger growth recruiting enough of the right kind of people to be bus drivers has been a challenge this year. At one point we had some 150 bus driving vacancies to fill! We are making great progress with this now our strategy is to make First Bristol an employer of choice and to get the right, people-focussed, people into the business. The first phase of this change came into effect in November when the basic driver’s rate of pay on Bristol’s city buses rose to £11.05 per hour. We continually strive to keep our employees engaged and a big measure of this success was not only that 76% of our staff filled out the form but 66% admitted to feeling engaged.

ticketing improvement in value for money in the last two years Thanks to the increasing passenger numbers in Bristol we have been able to keep the vast majority of ticket prices the same. In October 2014 we put the price of a Bristol Inner Zone Day Ticket up by 40p and we were very pleased to be able to put this price back to £4 in October of this year to recognise such significant passenger growth. Our mTicket smartphone ticketing app has also been very successful this year with more and more people switching to paperless mTickets every day. our expanding network We have developed our services during the year, with two major change dates in the year. In March we increased frequencies on several routes on Sundays and introduced the 75 service as an extra 24/7 operation. We continued this trend in August, with a new route 48a introduced daily, connecting the City Centre via Fishponds and Glenside with the UWE Frenchay campus. This allowed us to provide a bus every 5 minutes along Stapleton Road.

24 million miles travelled by our buses

service punctuality Our punctuality reflects the level of congestion on the roads that we run our services along. Rising congestion is an increasing concern and will only be solved by working in partnership with the highway authorities. So we were delighted in September to sign a Punctuality Improvement Partnership with Bristol City Council. This document makes a public pledge to our customers that we will work alongside the Council to improve bus punctuality levels in the city by keeping an open dialogue and setting achievable targets for both the council and us.

service reliability We recognise that bus services are more attractive to customers if they are reliable. We have introduced 25 extra buses into service in Bristol this year in order to compensate for slower running times due mainly to congestion. By this means we have managed to stand still but in the next twelve months we will continue to work on those routes that aren’t as reliable as we would like to bring about further improvement.

PCUK is our national charity of choice We want our buses to be the People’s Friend.

We greatly value our position within the community of Bristol and its surrounding area.

Our buses reach almost every corner of the city meaning we are perfectly positioned to raise awareness of good causes. This year FirstBus’ charity partner is Prostate Cancer UK and our staff have been working really hard to raise money for this vital cause including various dress-up days and such things as arranging a sponsored charity ride from Bristol to Poole.

Alongside their efforts for Prostate Cancer UK our staff have worked to raise awareness and money to provide a service dog for the disabled son of one of our drivers at Lawrence Hill depot in Bristol. To make this happen our drivers arranged for fancy dress days, “wrong tie” days and one driver was even sponsored to walk in hot pants and heals (mimicking the Money Supermarket TV advert) through Bristol’s main shopping area on a Sunday to raise money!

We have continued to support the Bristol Pound – our local community currency that is designed to keep trade local - by accepting it for payment on our buses

safety and security for everybody We are dedicated to improving the safety of our passengers and our staff. We have a key phrase: “If you can’t do it safely – don’t do it!

100

years of First South West, and its predecessors, serving local communities.

Our many new buses this year have increased the number of CCTV cameras across our fleet, making travel safer and more secure for everybody.

We pride ourselves on our staff relations but First Bristol was one of the first local businesses to sign a pledge to help reduce gender based violence, harassment and bullying for our staff and customers as part of a scheme promoted by Bristol City Council and the Bristol Women’s Commission.

Our Marlborough Street bus station in Bristol is a registered ‘safe place’ as part of Bristol’s safe place scheme; we also train our staff to be vigilant and assist if ever they witness any form of bullying or harassment in our business across Bristol.

Finally we have a dedicated hotline set up that our employees can phone (anonymously) and report instances of bullying, harassment or violence

Looking Forward We will build on 2015 to develop our staff, our customer service, our route network and our reputation as the West of England’s leading public transport operator across Bath, West Wiltshire, Wells and Weston-super-Mare– First Bus at your service!

First West of England Enterprise House Easton Road Bristol BS5 0DZ james.freeman@firstgroup.com For lost property and other issues phone our Customer Services Team 0117 244 4040 Traveline 0871 200 2233 (0700-2200 daily) First West of England is part of FirstGroup plc, the leading transport operator in the UK and North America providing services help to create strong, vibrant and sustainable local economies.