National Express set to use jobs bonus to cut bus fares

NATIONAL Express plans to use £4m in job retention bonuses to slash ticket prices on its local bus services.

The firm hopes cutting fares will attract people back to using its buses in the West Midlands and Dundee.

A full service is running in the West Midlands, and routes are running at 90pc in Dundee, but its buses are around half-full.

The company is best known for its coaches in the UK, which will not be covered by the reduced fares. Its coaches are only about a fifth full at present.

The Government’s Job Retention Bonus pays £1,000 for each worker who is brought back from furlough and then employed until January.

This means National Express should be bringing around 4,000 people back from the scheme, which ends in October. Yesterday, it admitted it has no idea when demand will return to pre-pandemic levels.

There was an 80pc slump in passenger numbers during lockdown and the company racked up costs of £63.5m during the six-month period, which included buying up protective equipment for staff and the impact of cancellations. It swung to a total loss of £122m in the first six months of the year, which covers the entire period of lockdown in the UK, and revenues dropped 23pc to £1.bn.

It also operates in Germany, Spain and the US.

Shares sank 16.2pc, or 28.5p, to 147.5p on the profit drop, making it the biggest faller on the FTSE 250 index.

But bus companies in England have been given a boost with the Government agreeing to extend the Covid-19 aid indefinitely. It said on Monday it would hand out £218.4m over the next eight weeks and that it will provide up to £27.3m a week after that ‘until a time when the funding is no longer needed’.