Stagecoach South West is ignoring its legal duty to provide passenger information on buses

If you use Stagecoach buses in Exeter and around you may have noticed more rattles than usual. This is likely to be because the bus you’re travelling on is rather old.

Although Stagecoach South West have for many years now run a small number of buses that are now 20 years old, the Exeter fleet was progressively modernising. Recently that trend has gone into reverse with the increasing appearances of elderly buses drafted in from other parts of the Stagecoach empire. This weekend, for example, I travelled on a bus with 2007 registration plates and displaying posters advising that complaints should be directed to Stagecoach Yorkshire in Barnsley.

So what’s this all about? A year ago I wrote an article for Exeter Observer on Stagecoach South West’s attitude to complying with new regulations about providing audible and visual information on buses about upcoming bus stops. The new rules are being phased in, starting with newer buses:

• Vehicles first used on or after 1 October 2019 must comply with the regulations from 1 October 2024 onwards.
• Vehicles first used between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2019 must comply with the regulations from 1 October 2025 onwards.
• Vehicles first used between 1 January 1973 and 30 September 2014 must comply with these regulations from 1 October 2026 onwards.

For the Exeter Observer article we estimated then that nearly 40% of the Stagecoach’s Exeter-based fleet of around 150 buses would need modifying to comply by October 2025. In other words, that 40% comprised buses first used between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2019, buses with date registrations on their plates of 64, 15, 65, 16, 66, 17, 67, 18, 68, 19.

Stagecoach don’t publish official fleet lists. But using data from the volunteer websites UK Fleet Lists and bustimes.org I calculate that, one year on, that 40% figure has dropped to between 25% and 30%. in other words, Stagecoach appears to have reduced the number of potentially non-compliant buses at its Exeter depot, using transfers in of older buses to make up the allocation.

Using data from the bustimes.org website the age of the buses used on an October weekday on a mix of city and country routes is as follows:

Route	Col I	Col II	Col III
1/1a	9	2	7
2	10	2	8
4	11	1	10
4a	3	1	2
A	4	3	1
B	8	3	5
E	5	1	4
I	3	1	2
J	4	0	4
P	3	1	2
R	4	0	4
TOTAL	64	15	49

• Col I is the total number of buses deployed on the route during the day.
• Col II is the number of those buses registered between Oct 2014 and Sep 2018
• Col III is the number of those buses registered before Oct 2014

{Note that these are not totals of all Stagecoach Exeter-based buses but only a selection in use on some routes)

Under the regulations all the buses in col II should now be compliant, ie they should be operating visual and audible information, and should have been doing so since 1 October 2025.

A visual survey in central Exeter over the past few days shows that few of their Col II buses are in fact equipped with the new information equipment. Some registrations in the YX68 series were observed to be compliant, but random checks found some buses with 64, 15 and 66 plates were not so equipped.

Which brings us back to the growth in elderly buses. Perhaps Stagecoach think that by flooding the city with buses that aren’t (yet) required to be compliant that we won’t notice. Or that the level of non-compliance is sufficiently low not to upset the Traffic Commissioner. Or they’re just plain stupid, as evidenced by this exchange on X/Twitter on 31 October:

Me – @StagecoachSW what’s happened to the mandatory audible and visual info systems on your buses in #Exeter? I was on YJ74 DBU (48180) just now (service K from Sidwell St at 1641) and the equipment was not on. I’ve seen other buses with 15, 64, 66 registration also non-compliant.

SSW – Thanks for reaching out! It will be mandatory for all services to be updated with these by 2031. Full information on the regulations can be found via the http://gov.uk website.

Me – Sorry you’re not quite right. The regs state that vehicles first used between 1 October 2014 and 30 September 2019 must comply with the regulations from 1 October 2025 onwards. And newer ones from 1 Oct 2024. So Stagecoach is breaking the law.

There has been no further reply. Given that Stagecoach is the key player in Devon County Council’s Enhanced Partnership arrangements, councillors may want to consider their attitude to the company’s disregard of the law.