Greater Manchester buses: search begins for new network's drivers

Managing director Nigel Featham said the campaign matched "the huge scale of change we'll be helping to deliver"

A "groundbreaking recruitment campaign" has been launched to find 300 "elite" drivers for a city region's new bus service, its operator has said.

Go North West has begun recruiting for when it begins serving Greater Manchester's Bee Network.

In September, the region will become the first area outside London to have a regulated bus system since the 1980s.

Managing director Nigel Featham said the campaign matched "the huge scale of change we'll be helping to deliver".

The firm intends to initially hire 300 people to train in a newly created "Elite Bus Driver Academy", before they take charge of the buses in the first two areas to see the rollout of the network.

It said they would "undertake an intensive six-week training programme", which was open to both "existing bus driver licence holders and to those who have never sat behind the wheel of a bus before".

The drivers will operate yellow Bee Network buses in Bolton and Wigan from September.

The network will then be rolled out in Rochdale and Oldham by March 2024 and in Manchester, Trafford, Stockport and Tameside by January 2025.

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