April 29th 2020: Fleet Ramblings

Stagecoach UK Bus
We understand that Stagecoach has significantly scaled back its new vehicle plans for the 2020/21 financial year. Bids had been made for new vehicles as part of the 2020/21 Budget Review process and, although not announced by the company, new vehicle requirements had been agreed.
However, Stagecoach made it clear in a trading statement earlier this month that it had significantly scaled back its Capital Expenditure Budget for 2020/21 which will impact on new vehicles being taken into the fleet.
In the statement Stagecoach said: 
“In our (previous) statement of 23rd March, we outlined a number of actions we had taken in response to the impact of the COVID-19 situation on the business. Those management actions include reducing our capital expenditure.  
“Prior to COVID-19 having an effect on the business, our capital expenditure plans for 2020/21 envisaged around £105m of cash capital expenditure and around £38m of new leases. For the time being, we have scaled down the planned expenditure to around £40m of cash capital expenditure and around £20m of new leases.  
The scaled down plans reflect vehicles ordered which are either already built or largely built, vehicles required for new London bus contracts secured, electrical infrastructure work required for new London bus contracts secured, completion of some ongoing land and buildings work, and a reduced spend on technology and change projects.”
We believe that the 52 ADL Enviro 400MMCs for the Stagecoach Manchester fleet will be built and delivered - the first three had been delivered to Manchester in March. We have no confirmation on which other vehicles may still be on the order book for provincial fleets and whether the recently-announced order for new coaches for Stagecoach Oxfordshire’s ‘Oxford tube’ operations remain on the order books. 

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