If Chamber members are the cogs and wheels of the Cumbrian economy, we like to think of ourselves as the lubricant that makes everything run smoothly.
As the county’s largest bus operator, we get your customers to and from your premises and your staff to and from work.
Our head office is in Broadacre House, Carlisle, on the floor below Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, but we have a presence right across Cumbria and into North Lancashire.
We employ 810 staff and operate 289 buses from depots in Carlisle, Barrow, Workington, Kendal and Morecambe. These buses travel 12.4 million miles and carry 19.5 million passengers each year.
We’re proud to be Cumbria’s local bus company and we’re equally proud to be part of the Stagecoach Group. Based in Perth in Scotland, Stagecoach grew rapidly after bus services were privatised in the 1980’s and now operates buses all over the country and the megabus.com inter-city coach network.
The company has a devolved and empowered management structure, which means Stagecoach Cumbria and North Lancashire’s managing Tom Waterhouse and his team have a high degree of autonomy. This makes us flexible and responsive and able to innovate when we see opportunity.
A good example is our 77/77A Honister Rambler, a circular route linking Keswick with Buttermere and Borrowdale. The former nationalised operator Cumberland Motors withdrew the service between Keswick and Buttermere in the 1970s. But we had a hunch it would work and saw it succeed beyond expectations. The Honister Rambler now runs hourly in summer carrying thousands of walkers and sightseers, providing an alternative to the car in one of Lakeland’s most congested honeypots.
Stagecoach has a strategy to be net zero UK by 2035. Almost 15% of our UK wide fleet is now already electric with plans to expand. In Cumbria we have invested £4 illion since 2023 in new ultra-low emission diesel buses for use in Barrow, West Cumbria and the Central Lakes. We aspire to deliver a more modern and sustainable public transport network for passengers, contributing to cleaner, quieter neighbourhoods through enhanced air quality and a reduction in noise pollution.
We share many of the challenges other Cumbrian businesses face.
Cumberland Council and Westmorland and Furness are both receiving funding from the Government’s Bus Service Improvement Plan Plus and funds diverted from HS2 specifically to improve bus services. We are working with them to identify where this funding can enhance existing services and launch new services that have a chance of becoming self-sustaining in the longer term.
For example, we’ve doubled the frequency of the 300 between West Cumbria and Carlisle and the X4/X5 between Keswick and Penrith, launched the 60 from Workington to Silloth and Skinburness, and added early morning and late evening journeys on the 6 allowing workers from Barrow and Ulverston to commute to jobs in Bowness and Windermere.
We are looking to build on this partnership to transform how people get around Cumbria and put buses at the heart of their travel choices.
The Government’s £2 fare cap on bus fares in England – £3 from January 2025 – has been a big plus for us too. Designed to encourage passengers back onto buses after Covid, it has seen adult fare-paying passenger numbers increase by about 10 percent and return to pre-pandemic levels.
We’re keen to work with other Cumbrian businesses and we’d love to hear from you. Our Stagecoach Solutions team is on hand to help you find an easy and affordable way to help your staff get to work.
Take a look at our website – https://www.stagecoachbus.com/ – and download the Stagecoach Bus app from Google Play or Apple’s App Store.
