United Counties Omnibus - Nationalisation

Nationalisation

In 1948 the Tilling Group sold its bus interests to the government. United Counties therefore became a state-owned company, under the control of the British Transport Commission.

The new regime resulted in a major expansion of the company's area of operations. In 1952 Eastern National's operations in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, North Hertfordshire and Huntingdonshire, with some 250 vehicles, were transferred to United Counties. This practically doubled the size of the company. At the same time the Oxford to London service was transferred to South Midland.

In 1969 United Counties took over Birch Brothers giving it another express service into London besides its Nottingham –Leicester- London route. In 1970 they took over Luton Corporation buses. There followed a period when the company was under severe pressure in coping with the maintenance of the Luton combined fleet and had to forgo its duty to deal with recovery of fellow National Bus Company subsidiaries’ coaches broken down on its allocated and very busy section of the M1 for a while.

Towards the end of the 1970s, better relationships were negotiated with county councils and the Milton Keynes Development Corporation. The company was then able to make strides in greatly improving its maintenance facilities with major work at Northampton depot, Wellingborough, Bedford, Milton Keynes (including a 100 vehicle Winterhill depot on a green field site) and Luton.

Successive governments changed the structure of the state-owned bus sector: in 1962, the company was passed to the state-owned Transport Holding Company, then in 1969 to the state-owned National Bus Company.