History
Preparation for privatisation in 1986 saw London Country Bus Services split into four smaller companies, named as London Country North East, London Country North West, London Country South East and London Country South West divisions. The South West division contained 415 buses.
South West was sold in February 1988 to the Drawlane Group. The London Country South West name and livery were replaced by the London & Country name and adopted a modern two-tone green and red livery.
In 1986 London & Country went into LRT route tendering in a significant way under Drawlane, winning several contracts using secondhand Atlanteans from Greater Glasgow, GM Buses and Busways, where bus deregulation was making the major fleets dispose of large numbers of surplus vehicles. In 1989 London & Country was faced with having to update its double-decker fleet if it were to win further contracts and have hope of renewing its existing ones.
The first new buses to be delivered to the company, a batch of thirteen Volvo Citybuses with 88-seater East Lancs bodies, entered service at Addlestone garage in September 1989, displacing ageing secondhand Leyland Atlanteans.
In December 1992 Drawlane renamed itself British Bus. More London tendered routes were taken over and London & Country acquired the Guildford area operations of Alder Valley when that concern was split up. These operations were rebranded Guildford & West Surrey. The coach operations of London & Country were split off as Speedlink Airport Services, and later sold to National Express Group.
Depots at the time were Cranleigh, Crawley, Croydon, Dunton Green, Guildford, Hounslow, Leatherhead, Merstham, Slyford, Walworth, Warnham and Woking.
In June 1996 British Bus was sold to the Cowie Group, which rebranded itself Arriva in November 1997. Under Cowie, Croydon, Dunton Green and Walworth garages were separated off into a new Londonlinks company. and the remaining division was rebranded into London & Country, albeit losing the area brand.
In 2000, the remainder of London & Country was sold to Arriva Guildford & West Surrey where some of the garages, Dunton Green, Hounslow, Leatherhead, Merstham, Slyford and Woking were closed. Londonlinks was absorbed into Arriva London earlier in November 1999.
Crawley was sold to Metrobus in 2001, as was Warnham in 2009.
Read more about this topic: London Country South West
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