Premiere Travel

Premiere Travel

Bus 3347, one of the companies MAN A22/Wright Meridians.
Founded	September 2002
Headquarters	Trent Wharf, Meadow Lane, NG2 3HR, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Service area	Nottinghamshire
Service type	Bus
Routes	44
Hubs	Nottingham
Stations	Trent Wharf
Fleet	100 buses and 13 coaches
Fuel type	Diesel
Operator	Premiere Travel .LTD
Chief executive	Steve Greaves
Website	www.premierebuses.co.uk now closed down

Premiere Travel was a family-owned bus and coach operator largely serving the Nottinghamshire area. The company was formed in 2002 with a pair of Leyland Nationals and developed into a significant size providing mainly local bus services.

It ceased trading on 25 January 2013, due to increasing debts within the company, it was reported that Managing Director Stephen Greaves wanted to sell Premiere Travel onto a buyer who could clear the debts and it was also said he wanted to sell Premiere on so he could retire.^[1]

History

The company was set up in 2003 with a pair of ex- Nottingham City Transport Leyland National buses working school contracts. The company expanded in to the coach hire, day excursion and holiday business, as well as picking up council tenders to operate stage carriage services.

It then moved into wholly commercial stage carriage services, starting with running its buses in service to and from the Bingham schools to avoid dead mileages on school contracts. These were built up to Bingham, Hucknall, Long Eaton amongst other places, competing in the main with the established operator, TrentBarton.

Veolia Transport sold the bus and private hire coach operations of Dunn-Line, its Nottingham-based subsidiary, to Premiere from January 2011, along with between thirty and forty vehicles.^[2]

Despite carrying good loads on some routes, low fares and a lot of unremunerative work meant that the company struggled to make money.

On 24 January 2013 it was announced that the company had been placed in administration.^[3] On 25 January 2013 at 17:00hrs they ceased operating with immediate effect after a buyer for the business was not found.^[4]

Administration and collapse

On 21 January 2013, a notice of intention to appoint an administrator has been filed, protecting it from creditors.^[5] This leaked into the media on January 24 with numerous articles circling online from BBC News, Nottingham Post^[6] and Route One.^[7] Paul Finnity, from RSM Tenon, said: "Premiere is a company which... has expanded quickly... but... perhaps too rapidly."^[8]

On 25 January, shortly after 5.30pm Nottinghamshire County Council announced via their twitter page that Premiere had already ceased operations at 5pm. ^[9]

Local operators Trent Barton and Nottingham City Transport announced that they would be putting in place special measures to ensure Premiere customers could continue to use their tickets and the relevant trentbarton and Nottingham City Transport services.^[10] Loughborough based Kinchbus announced via their facebook page that they would be reinstating their number 9 service between Loughborough and Nottingham from 26 January and would also accept Premiere's tickets for free on their new service for a limited time.^[11]

Following the collapse of Premiere over 200 staff were made redundant but a number of former Premiere employees were taken on by Yourbus who've gained the UniHopper contracts from University of Nottingham along with the majority of Premiere's National Express work both of which Premiere had gained in early 2011, some of their former employees have also been taken on by Skills and Silverdale of Nottingham who also gained National Express work following the collapse of Premiere.^{[citation needed]}

References

External links

Media related to Premiere Travel at Wikimedia Commons