Jonathan Welch pays a return visit to South Pennine Community Transport to see how the business has grown over the last four years
It’s now nine years since South Pennine Community Transport started out as a one-bus operation in 2015. By the time I paid a visit in early 2020, the operation had grown to a fleet of nine, with seven required each day, plus one each of a Transit and low-floor bus as spares. The Ford Transits remain a vital part of the fleet, but it has grown and adapted to the changing needs of the business.
At the time of my last visit, founder and Director Kevin Carr told me that although the Transits were a vital part of the fleet, the business had also taken on a 27-seat Enviro200, along with a low-floor Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. “We didn’t plan on owning one so big, we trialled it and it worked really well, so we went with it,” he told me, talking about the Enviro200, “but we couldn’t run a fleet of them, we couldn’t sustain the costs. I don’t think we’ll have another.” Having seen how the business has changed and evolved over the intervening years – I count 46 routes listed on its website, including the Sheffield city centre circular and school services, many operating daily – I was keen to go back and see whether that was still the case.
For those who don’t remember from my last feature, Kevin is an experienced busman, who began his career as a driver with Yorkshire Traction in his early 20s. He moved on to K-Line, where he was a relief supervisor, before ending up as a Commercial Projects Manager for Yorkshire Tiger. A desire to do more led to the founding of South Pennine Community Transport, SPCT for short, serving the bespoke needs of the rural area centred around Holmfirth and the Holme Valley.
I arrived at SPCT’s depot in Honley, which highlighted the first major change since my last visit. Not only is SPCT now housed at a much larger site alongside the town’s railway station – in the former goods yard, a site used by a number of other operators in the near and not-so-near past – but Honley is also now one of two depots the company has. The other is in Sheffield, a sign not only of its expansion in size but also geography.
Having greeted me with the offer of a hot mug of tea – very welcome on a bitterly cold Pennine morning – and watched a train go past on its way to Barnsley, I sat down with Kevin in his ‘new’ office. Mention of the train’s destination prompted some discussion around the fortunes of the local area, especially the former industrial and mining heartlands to the south. Kevin pointed out that Barnsley has undergone somewhat of a transformation in recent times, making the town centre a welcoming and busy place, in contrast to nearby Rotherham which seems rather down on its luck, not helped by being flanked on either side by the out-of-town shopping centres at Meadowhall and Parkgate.
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