insideKENT Magazine Issue 29 - August 2014 | Page 149

LOCALBUSINESS
insideKENT TALKS TO

Divene Anderson, Marketing Manager of

Stagecoach South East
Operating as part of the Stagecoach Group, Stagecoach South East prides itself on upholding
a comprehensive network of express and local bus services, with an intense focus on its
people, green policies and first-class customer experience.

Your network is very impressive. Tell us a bit
about Stagecoach South East.
Stagecoach South East is a subsidiary of
Stagecoach Group PLC – an international provider
of bus, coach, tram and rail services in the UK,
USA and Canada.
We provide local bus services across East
Kent and East Sussex, with some routes
extending into Tunbridge Wells and Maidstone.
We also operate coaches to London on behalf
of National Express.
Our head office is in Canterbury, with local
depots in Herne Bay, Thanet, Ashford,
Folkestone, Dover, Hastings and Eastbourne,
plus a small outstation at Old Romney.
Our aim is to provide safe, reliable, punctual,
clean and comfortable services with a good value
for money range of tickets and fares. We are
proud to be able to say that bus use in Kent has
doubled in the last decade from under 15 million
to over 31 million, most of whom are fare paying
passengers rather than concessionary pass
holders.
We are also a major local employer with
997 drivers, 188 engineers and cleaners, and
104 support staff, supervisors and managers –
all based locally.
So you’re very much a local company, despite
being part of a national PLC?
Yes – we carried 49.7 million passengers over
19.8 million miles last year; we try to play a big

part in the local community, as so many people
rely on us to go about their everyday activities.
W also support a number of local community
e
groups and our corporate charity is Pilgrims
Hospices in East Kent. The team at Stagecoach
South East takes part in regular fundraising events
for the hospice, with one driver running the
London Marathon this year on its behalf. Over
the last two years, we have raised over £10,000
for the charity.
A recent partnership with East Kent Hospitals
University Foundation Trust led to improvements
on seven existing bus services in Ashford,
Canterbury and Thanet, plus the introduction of
three brand new routes to improve transport
links to several hospitals.
How important is it that your buses are
accessible to all?
We want to make sure the greatest number of
people possible can use our services. Today,
87% of our fleet is low-floor or wheelchair lift
equipped to provide easy access for the elderly,
disabled and for parents with buggies.
All new buses are low-floor easy access
buses and we introduce our new vehicles on our
busiest routes to ensure the highest possible
number of customers benefit from these modern,
comfortable and environmentally friendly vehicles.
Last year we invested over £2.1 million in
18 brand new single-deck buses, and in
September we launched our first ever fleet of
bio-buses on our Unibus route (Canterbury City

www.stagecoachbus.com/southeast
149

Centre to the University of Kent), costing a further
£1.1 million.
Tell us a bit more about bio-buses and your
other green policies.
The bio-buses on the Unibus route run on 100%
biofuel, a sustainable fuel manufactured from
blending and refining used cooking oil and fat
sourced from the UK food industry. Biofuel
requires special storage arrangements; therefore,
a new infrastructure was installed at our Herne
Bay depot to house the environmentally friendly
fuel. We are expecting a 50% reduction in
pollutants compared to the emissions from the
vehicles they replaced, greatly reducing the
environmental impact of the Unibus service.
The rest of our fleet runs on low sulphur
diesel, with high-tech additive, Envirox, to reduce
pollution and improve fuel consumption. Vehicle
engines must meet increasingly higher Euro
standards of exhaust emissions. At present, 73%
of our fleet meets at least the Euro 3 standard.
We recycle the majority of our waste, such
as litter, used oils, filters, batteries, parts, etc.
We also recycle the water we use to wash our
vehicles every night.
All of our buses are also equipped with an
eco-driving system called Green Road. The
system gives drivers an indication of how they
are driving via a green, amber and red warning
device, and so reduces fuel consumption by
encouraging better driving practices.