(16 Dec 2022, 9:53 am)morritt89 wrote I definitely think he is here for the long haul and dare I say it, he has a business mentality which is required to make the business profit making again.

Unfortunately this includes redundancy for non driving and engineering staff but does a depot really need 5 managers? At Arriva, again under Nigel, there were 2 managers at Belmont and that was it.

I can see, to the detriment of the network and passenger experience more service cuts and more staff going out to tender (at least that's guaranteed income).

The 4274 contracts have been handed back to DCC but apparently GNE has bid for them again. After the drivers pairwise, they became loss making (and also Nigel doesn't like the coaches).

As a driver I genuinely feel sorry for the managers particularly those that have worked there way up from being a driver and put the hours in and gone above and beyond. As for the timing at Christmas, redundancy is never something a manager wants to do so is there a right time?

As a final part, Nigel admitted in his staff memo that GNE was going downhill and losing money before Covid but obviously Covid was the straw that broke the camels back.

In my personal opinion, to much focus has been given to branding (Sunderland District) and little on board extras rather than focusing on what's important which is a bus which gets people from A to B when they want to go and is reliable. What difference does it matter what colour a bus us? Once your on it, you can't see the outside...

There is a difference between liveries and branding though.

Unlike something like Cobalt Clipper or Angel, Sunderland and District is a failed exercise in branding as there is nothing behind it (the network map has whole swathes of Sunderland blank) If it was joint Stagecoach thing then I could see the benefit. What you are left with is meaningless liveries. 

Going forward, I think there will be less of the Sunderland and District nonsense and more focus on the few universally recognised brands.