HCT Group’s Bristol Community Transport (BCT) arm abruptly ceased operations after Friday 2 September. It represents further contraction for the troubled social enterprise and came a week after BCT ended the delivery of group transport services, including dial-a-ride.
Metrobus route m1, which is serviced by a batch of Scania ADL Enviro400CBG biogas-fuelled double-deckers, will pass to First West of England (FWoE) from 5 September. BCT operated the route under contract to FWoE, but the service will not run over the weekend of 3 and 4 September. BCT has cited “transition between two bus companies” as the reason for that gap.
The West of England Combined Authority is “working hard to try and secure an alternative operator” for other routes formerly operated by Bristol Community Transport but it continued to advise on 2 September that no solution had yet been found. It is understood that BCT was placed on the market ahead of its operations ceasing.
A brief statement blames the closure on the financial impact of the pandemic and elevated fuel and labour costs, which left the organisation “with no alternative” to ending operations. That is an echo of the reasoning given for the end of HCT’s CT Plus Yorkshire and Powell’s Bus operations on 5 August. Both of those companies are now in administration.
In addition to closing its Bristol and Yorkshire undertakings, HCT Group also recently sold its Transport for London contracted bus services to Stagecoach.
HCT’s most recent accounts at the time of writing show that as of September 2021, it was subject to what it termed “accumulated arrears” to HMRC and the Department for Transport that were incurred in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A time to pay arrangement had been reached with HMRC, but the social enterprise expected that arrears payments would be made “over the next two to three years” from then, and that “further funding may need to be raised in the next 12–24-month period to support continued growth and time to pay arrangements.”
Options around that funding were being explored but at the time the accounts were filed there was “a degree of uncertainty” around it.
