Manchester felt different at the start of term this year. ‘The Wilmslow Road corridor’, often called the busiest bus route in Europe, was a shell of its usual self. Amidst the industrial action taken by bus drivers across Greater Manchester during the first two weeks of term, Fallowfield felt disconnected.
From 19 to 22 September and 30 September to 2 October, 2,000 Stagecoach and Metroline drivers based in Oldham, Stockport and Middleton went on strike after rejecting a pay raise offer of 3.5 percent; a real terms pay-cut labelled as “insulting” by Unite the Union.
In the absence of the Bee Network, students walked along Wilmslow Road en masse to attend welcome week events and lectures; campus was far less accessible. But how did Manchester’s bus network reach breaking point? Why did drivers have to strike? And why should students support them?
Some historical context
Before the Bee Network, Manchester’s bus service had been privatised since deregulation under Thatcher in 1986.
The 2021 report, ‘The Human Cost of Privatising Buses in the UK’, led by former UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, claimed that: “Over the past 35 years, [deregulation] has provided a master class in how not to run an essential public service.”
The report states that, across the country, privatisation has resulted in lower quality jobs and unsafe working conditions as “bus operators have prioritised profits and dividends – extracting money from the system.” One retired driver, who worked through the transition to deregulation in the 1980s, testified for the report:
“It’s impossible to keep alert for that amount of time; when you’ve got all these passengers on, your mind starts shutting down, you’re mentally tired…. It was all about cutting down to the absolute minimum.”
In 2006, concerns were raised by a police investigation that UK North, a company which ran Manchester’s bus service at the time, had “jeopardis[ed] public safety by allowing a large number of drivers to drive for days without a rest.” The investigation came after a driver — who had been working for 19 consecutive days — crashed into a cherry picker, fatally injuring workman Martin Pilling. The directors of GM Buses and UK North were jailed for falsifying records of drivers’ working hours to dispute the claims brought against them by the investigation.
Under the Bee Network, Manchester’s bus service is no longer deregulated. But have the problems caused by deregulation simply vanished with it?
Who currently runs Manchester’s buses?
The implementation of the ‘Bee Network’, which started in late 2023, has given a veneer of public ownership to Manchester’s buses. Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) now awards regulated contracts to bus operators such as First Greater Manchester, Stagecoach and Metroline. But underneath the fresh yellow paint these private companies still make a healthy profit. In the financial year that ended in April 2025, FirstGroup — the parent company of First Greater Manchester — made an adjusted operating profit of £96 million, while Stagecoach’s most recent accounts report an operating profit from regional bus services of £112.9m.
Under the TfGM contract, Stagecoach’s 2024 financial report mentioned an improvement in “operational reliability”, after the adverse effects of 2023 staff shortages. However, there was a reported risk that the company would be unable to attract a suitable workforce to “maintain a healthy business culture.” The report mentions strategies to manage this risk including “improved recruitment initiatives” and setting up “working groups to identify more attractive rotas and shift patterns in conjunction with unions.”
Meanwhile, unions report that their drivers are “suffering from ill health caused by their working conditions”. Furthermore, in September 2025, a message was issued to Stagecoach Manchester drivers informing them that “If nature calls and you have to use a bottle for a quick comfort break…please make sure to take it with you and dispose of it properly”. Drivers described the message as an “insult” and reported feeling like “Stagecoach is putting profits over people” with the company “focused on running buses as close to optimum running time as possible rather than improving conditions for us.”
Before the Bee Network
Both before and after franchising, crashes occurred under the control of private operators. For example, in July 2022 a bus driver crashed into a bus stop in Piccadilly, killing Joyce Bacon, 60, and Adele Boylin, 55, after suffering an “unfortunate lapse of concentration“. In August of 2023, a bus driver reportedly “suffered a medical episode” shortly before a crash near the Palace Theatre on Oxford Road. In January 2025, another bus driver “suffered a medical episode” while driving an empty bus. The driver crashed the bus and died later in hospital. In April 2023, a bus had its roof ripped off in a crash with a bridge on Barton Lane in Eccles. Repeats of the incident at the same location occurred in both July and November 2025. The repeated nature of the incident raises questions about whether signage, route markings, or driver-routing protocols are adequate.
Over a similar period drivers reported poor health and long, tiring working hours that led to mistakes. An Oldham Times survey, conducted at the town’s depot picket line in 2023, reported that 45 percent of the drivers worked over 40 hours per week, 30 percent reported issues with their physical and mental health, and 74 percent reported having made errors while driving due to fatigue.
Improved pay and working conditions for drivers are important in ensuring a safe and reliable bus network. Yet, as unions and drivers report concerns over working conditions, private operators continue to turnover large profits.
Who profits from the bus service?
In both 2023 and 2024, Stagecoach issued statements of compliance with Section 172 of the 2006 Companies Act, affirming that directors primarily “acted in a way …[that] would be most likely to promote the success of the Company for the benefit of its members as a whole.” But who are these members? They are not drivers or the public.
Companies House lists one private company under ‘persons with significant control’ for Stagecoach, namely Inframobility Bidco Limited (IB Ltd). The company owns over 75 percent of Stagecoach’s shares and voting rights and, since the recent resignation of its previous ‘Director/Portfolio Manager’, Miguel Horta E Costa, Companies House lists one unnamed person as the majority shareholder. FirstGroup and Metroline have the same situation, with 75 percent or more of shares owned by Jon Matthew Reddy and Christopher Junior McWalter respectively.
In the financial year April 2022 to April 2023, Stagecoach resumed paying dividends of £47.5m to its shareholders, and went on to increase them to £85m in the financial year ending in April 2024. In the 2023 financial year, FirstGroup reported having £38.7m available for dividends in 2023; in 2024 it returned £117.6m to shareholders via buyback schemes and £24.3m via dividends; and in 2025 it returned £126m to shareholders via dividends and buyback programmes.
Meanwhile Stagecoach failed to fully backdate a pay offer to its drivers in August 2023. Instead, a £750 one-off payment was offered in lieu of full back pay. And the Oldham Times survey, specific to FirstBus drivers, found that 61 percent of drivers on the picket line had to cut back spending on essentials like food and heating, while 20 percent missed mortgage payments and 15 percent missed meals due to financial difficulty. Unite the Union has repeatedly raised concerns about bus drivers pay and working conditions, reporting that drivers were paid “derisory wages” in 2023 and had to “contend with low pay and a lack of toilets” in 2025.
So why support the strikes?
The recent bus strikes must be understood in the context of how the bus service has been run in recent years. A safe, fair and reliable public transport system should meet the needs of its workers. But there seems to be a disconnect between the needs of drivers and the public, and the profits of private bus operators. The strikes in September signify drivers fighting against this disconnect; for a bus service that centres its workers and the city’s people.
On 1 October FirstBus drivers based in Oldham won an “exceptional” pay deal, which offered a 20 percent wage increase within 6 months; a huge win for drivers who had suffered from years of wage stagnation. Around 2,000 more drivers working for Metroline and Stagecoach won a 12% pay increase over two years on 15 October. The deal also included improvements to pay and time off during the Christmas period. And Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, committed to looking into historical issues with working conditions such as access to toilets, adequate breaks and better pension schemes.
To anyone in Manchester during the strikes, the city seemed far from itself. But in the empty bus lanes and overcrowded bus stops, there was a feeling of power. In their absence, bus drivers demanded recognition for their huge contribution to the city. It is not the yellow paint of the Bee Network that will save Manchester’s buses from privatisation, but the collective action of its workers.
The private operators in question did not respond to a request for comment. FirstBus declined to comment in retrospect and referred to the statement they released at the time of the strikes:
“We are disappointed not to have reached a final agreement and that strike action will go ahead from Friday 19 September up to and including Monday 22 September.
“Constructive talks have been held with Unite and we hope to reach a resolution as soon as possible. The management team at First Bus in Rochdale continues to work hard to find solutions to help our valued drivers during these tough economic times.
