Top National Bus Depot 2020

This award is open to bus depots that operate buses on local bus services outside London.

For the purposes of this award, a bus garage is defined as an authorised operating base at which vehicles are both stabled overnight and maintained.

Who can be nominated? 

In order to qualify to enter this award, a bus depot or garage must have an allocation of not less than ten vehicles with a minimum of 500,000 kilometres per year on registered local bus services. Additionally, the entered depot must represent less than 75% by mileage of the company’s operation.

… and by whom?

We welcome nominations from customers, authorities, user groups or bus operators. Self-nomination is acceptable.

Criteria and Entry Requirements

The award will be made to the depot or garage that, in the opinion of the judges, delivers the highest operational standards to its customers.

Entries must contain a full set of data against the following Key Performance Indicators:

• Scheduled annual mileage
• Fleet allocation
• Peak vehicle requirement
• Number of staff employed on platform, maintenance and administrative and management duties.
• Lost mileage as a percentage of scheduled
• Punctuality as a percentage of journeys on time (i.e. not more than one minute early and five minutes late)
• Annual PSV test pass rate
• Details of any warning or prohibition notices issued by DVSA in the previous twelve months
• Number of complaints received
• Staff sickness rate, all grades, including engineering staff, as a percentage of paid hours
• Staff turnover, all grades, including engineering staff, as a percentage of total workforce

In addition, each entry needs to contain a submission concerning the garage’s own work to:

• Maintain and improve operational standards
• Customer relations: show how the depot maintains and improves customer relations and monitors its operations to optimise performance. For example how it uses:
• technology, including social media, real-time information and mobile phone apps
• other methods of communicating with customers and potential customers including printed information
• customer satisfaction surveys, suggestion and complaint handling procedures and the monitoring of feedback.
• Play a positive role within the communities served (charity work, community involvement, sponsorship programmes, etc).
• Employee relations and training: provide evidence of the company’s employee relations policies and any discernible outcomes, including;
• diversity
• equal opportunities
• training, including CPC progress
• employee development programmes, such as advanced driver training and testing
• other initiatives and/or practices that engender staff loyalty.
• Develop and maintain a team spirit within the garage (for example sports and social clubs, etc).
• Health, safety and risk management: demonstrate the company’s approach to risk assessment in all its activities including;
• a commentary on Health and Safety issues for the past year, supported by reports on any significant incidents,
• showing how the company assesses the impact of its activities on staff, passengers and the general public and has monitoring and control measures to reduce risk and the level of the residual risks.

Entries should also state whether or not there has been any Traffic Commissioner action in the three years prior to entry or whether any investigation, disciplinary hearing or known DVSA report is ongoing at the time of entry.  If so, a full account of the matter(s) should be provided.

Entries should address each of the above criteria to assist with the judging process, because non-transferable marks will be allocated for each of these criteria.

Short-listed depots or garages will be subject to spot checks during the judging process and the routes they operate will be subject to ‘mystery travelling’ to check on delivery standards. Judges reserve the right to request additional data, for audit purposes. Any such data will be subject to the strictest confidentiality arrangements.

Note that it is a condition of entry that any prize awarded should be collected by at least one member of front-line staff at the Presentation Ceremony.

SENDING IMAGES

Please ensure that you send JPEG files. PDFs, pictures in Word files and in PowerPoint presentations are NOT acceptable.

For people categories, it is nice to see the person in a work environment – in a driving cab, by a vehicle or with colleagues, for example – but please ensure that the nominee is clearly recognisable. A head and shoulders shot is also useful. For other categories, please send pictures of your project or your company’s activities, and send one of the team involved.

These photographs may be used by us in a variety of ways, on the Bus Awards web site, in video presentations and in souvenir brochures and other printed material including the trade press.So that we can make the most effective use of the pictures you send us, please try to ensure that they are high-resolution JPG images (300 dpi) and at least 1200 x 1600 pixels in size. This implies a file size of at least several hundred KB – more is better. If you are using a mobile phone, please select the highest quality/most mega pixel/highest file size setting.