History
Giles Fearnley and Stuart Wilde established Blazefield in 1991 when they purchased 70% of Alan Stephenson's AJS Group.
At its inception there were nine operating subsidiaries: Harrogate & District, Harrogate Independent Travel, Keighley & District, Northern Rose, Rover Coaches, Sovereign Bus & Coach, Sovereign Buses (Harrow), Welwyn Hatfield Line and Yorkshire Coastliner.
AJS had owned West Yorkshire Road Car and London Country North East. LCNE was broken into two, Sovereign Bus & Coach and County Bus & Coach; only Sovereign became part of Blazefield. West Yorkshire was broken into its six depots, Leeds, Bradford, York, Malton, Harrogate and Keighley. Leeds and Bradford passed to Rider Group on 13 August 1989, which owned Yorkshire Rider (now First Leeds), while the remaining four depots became York City & District, Yorkshire Coastliner, Harrogate & District and Keighley & District respectively. The York operation was taken by Rider Group on 29 July 1990.
Expansion soon followed with the purchase of 14-vehicle Cambridge Coach Services from AJS in November 1991 and Watford-based Lucketts during the same month. Ingfield of Settle was added in April 1992 and was merged with Keighley-based Northern Rose to form Ingfield-Northern Rose.
In 1993 Harrogate Independent Travel - which had been set up as an independent in 1986 by a number of West Yorkshires Harrogate drivers to challenge their employer - was absorbed into Harrogate & District. In 1994 Blazefield made one of its most significant acquisitions was Borehamwood Travel Services (BTS), with 43 vehicles, 22 of which were AEC Routemasters for London route 13 (Golders Green - Aldwych). It was renamed London Sovereign.
By this time the Group owned 380 vehicles.
In 1994 Ingfield-Northern Rose bought Whaites Coaches of Settle. At the same time Sovereign was locked in battle with Universitybus. Blazefield was also supposedly behind Petlen Travel, trading as Noddy Bus, using old Sovereign buses.
In 1996 Harrogate & District grew again when it acquired Cowie's United operation in Ripon. In 1998 Huntingdon & District was created with the operations of Premier Buses, owned by Julian Peddle, but was sold to Cavalier of Sutton Bridge in 2004. Cambridge Coach Services was sold to National Express-owned Airlinks in 1999.
On Sunday 15 April 2001, Stagecoach Ribble's East Lancashire operations were acquired. Two new subsidiaries were formed, Burnley & Pendle at Burnley and Pendle depots and Lancashire United at Blackburn, Bolton and Clitheroe. Bolton was quickly sold on to independent Blue Bus of Horwich. At both subsidiaries great improvement has been made, such as most of the Stagecoach buses have been replaced.
During November 2002 Sovereign London was sold to the Transdev Group, and it became London Sovereign. In early 2005 the Competition Commission gave the thumbs-up for Blazefield's deal to sell what was left of Sovereign to Arriva Shires & Essex. The St Albans operation had already been sold to Centrebus of Leicester, with whom it became InMotion St Albans.
On 4 January 2006 the Group was sold to Transdev, taking their British bus fleet to just over 1,200.
In 2008, Transdev Blazefield purchased two bus operations in York - City Sightseeing franchise Top Line Travel and Veolia's bus operation, based at the same location - Fulford. Blazefield operates Yorkshire Coastliner (Malton) and Harrogate & District, both of whom operate into York. Top Line Travel was set up in 2002 and took over from Guide Friday open-top bus tours in York and now operates 10 of these vehicles plus a small number of local service buses and school contracts. Veolia moved into York towards the end of 2006 after it won the contracts to operate a number of local bus routes; it is administered by Top Line Travel.
Read more about this topic: Transdev Blazefield
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