Yes, our wages have gone up recently. Various companies were bought up by NCT over the last few years, such as South Notts, based in Gotham and Pathfinder Limited which had a depot in Newark. For many years the company operated from all these depots (Lower Parliament Street, Trent Bridge, Gotham and Newark). Last year the Newark depot closed and the pathfinder services (to Newark and Southwell) are now operated from Trent Bridge. There are plans to merge all depots into one new one, but this will take some time yet to be finalised.

The drivers working from the various depots are still on different wages and now the idea is to bring all wages in-line with one standard wage for all drivers. This is something the union has been pushing for and is slowly happening.

I can understand that you are angry at the rise in ticket price but I would have a look at the bigger picture here. NCT own a fleet of about 600 busses and employ about 1000 people. They do all their maintenance work in-house. And in the last 5 years there have been very big investments in new busses, bus shelters, work on depots, training for drivers. All this costs a lot of money. Just the 8 new busses they got last year for the Sneinton routes (23, 24) we’re talking over 8 million pounds!

I very much doubt that the recent increase in fares is to do with an increase of salary for the bosses. NCT is one of the largest council owned bus companies left in the UK. It treats its workers well and a committee of councillors oversees management decisions. The workforce is very heavily unionised, compared to Trent Barton, where the union is a total farce. Long working hours, less pay and intimidation by management is nothing new there. Remember that next time you catch the bus to Derby..