London Country evicted
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• London Country North West (LCNW) has pulled out of two inidibus services contracts with London Regional Transport, following its eviction from its operating base in Muswell Hill and London Buses (LBL) has been called in to continue the services.
The routes include the Camden Hoppa (route C2, Muswell HilUParliament Fields — Regent Street) and the Holloway Hoppa (route 153, Archway — Angel, Islington) and the LBL operation will initially be on a short-term basis while London Regional Transport seeks competitive tenders for longer term contracts.
LBL confirmed last week that Victoria-based Central London Midibuses will take on the two routes until the end of the year, when an announcement regarding a new tender is expected.
LCNW wil continue to run route 268 (Golders Green to Finchley Road) from its Wat ford base, but says it would be too uneconomical to run the other two from there, "We did consider running C2 and 153 from Borehamwood, but again it proved too expensive", says Clive King of LCNW.
LCNVV's base in Muswell Hill belongs to National Freight and no lease had been signed. "We had expected to sign a lease with National Freight" says King, "but that didn't come to fruition so we looked around for another base. There was nothing suitable so we were forced to stop operating."
LCNW denies that manning levels were an additional problem, but admits to "some staff retention problems". It has been plagued by manning level problems since deregulation and was recently at the centre of a storm in Hertfordshire and was prevented from registering any new local services until next November.
The Metropolitan Traffic Commissioner in that case found that LCNW "did not have a reasonable excuse for failing to provide services in accordance with its registrations" and criticised the company for failing to consider its customers.
The company said at the time that recruiting and the retention of staff had been difficult. The company had lost 50 drivers in January 1987 after deregulation which had been seen by the staff as inevitably leading to redundancies. The beginning of 1987 saw the company with a massive manning-level problem.