OPINION: We want to focus on customers not Covid - Harrogate Bus Company’s Alex Hornby

I’ve long been a believer in a free, consumer-led market when it comes to buying goods and services – not necessarily for any political or economic reasons, but much more because it motivates those of us who work in service industries to live and die by our customers.

It means you must work hard to serve their needs and create a customer-led product that the customer wants to use. It means you should research their needs and desires – and be prepared to change if you need to in order to remain relevant to them.

Of course, all this becomes more challenging when you have something which distorts the market as the pandemic has naturally done.

Certainly, our buses have always been here and always ready to serve, just as they have been throughout the pandemic – but even with all the additional measures we introduced to keep them clean and safe every single day, a global pandemic meant some customers would choose to travel less often.

That meant our industry, along with others similarly impacted such as the railways, needed support to keep on providing an essential service for our town, and our country.

So, in came government support to help us and other industries, with some notable and frustrating exceptions, to ensure we could keep on providing the best service we could in the absence of some customers and with reduced income.

As 2022 begins, many of us are now in a “what next?” phase. We have seen Christmas and New Year both pass us by with no new restrictions, but a relatively high degree of uncertainty and unease as we all speculate what January - traditionally a fairly depressed (and often depressing) time of year anyway – may bring.

As an industry, public transport still needs vital central government funding to bridge us back to income levels that are commercially sustainable.

Here in Harrogate, over 95 per cent of the bus network is run commercially - and it is that model that has produced innovation, investment and growth in bus usage. Pre-pandemic, more people were using buses more often than ever, and generated income to support our operations in the longer term remained stable.

We could invest, and ensure our business was based on a strong financial footing to provide security to our customers and our colleagues. With our long experience as a largely self-supporting commercial business, it feels very unusual now to find ourselves encouraging external funding as a key part of financing what we do.

Pre-pandemic, while we would compete for what was available in the form of grants to complement our investment (for example, converting investment in ultra-low emission fuel powered buses to zero emission electric whilst in a pioneering phase), it would have been quite dangerous to accept state support for day-to-day operations, because of the way it distorts the financial model which guides us as a commercial business.

So, while we welcome the current funding mechanism to get back on our feet, whenever that may be – and while we contend with whatever new Covid variant lands on us next - we really want to get back to being ruled by our customers. Whatever the new year brings, our focus on our customers will inspire us to build the best network and the best products for them, better long-term security for our teams and our company, and to do what we do best – deliver the best buses in Britain (not our words!) for our home town of Harrogate.