Bus, Trolleybus and Tram Routes of Kingston upon Hull Corporation
Predecessors and Successors. 1899 to 1986

Chapter Sixteen

Road Service Licences

As stated elsewhere, Road Service Licences were granted to operators under the auspices of the 1930 Road Traffic Act. There was no automatic right for an operator to be granted licences for services which were operated prior to the Act taking effect, but in general most operators did gain licences for most service for which they applied. Other operators were at liberty to object to the granting of a licence, or even make a counter application for any service. Each service application had details for routes, times and fares to be charged, and any change to the routes, times or fares required authority from the Minister of Transport, but generally, existing licences were retained, having only the details altered. Major changes to the route, however, usually resulted in the surrender of the existing licence and a new application, for the amended route. Up to the 1950’s short workings, night services and Sunday morning services were usually granted upon separate licences.

When granted, licences were issued a sequential number, commencing at one, this was prefixed by the operator’s number, which in the case of Hull Corporation was BH101. The B denoted the Yorkshire traffic area and the H101 was the Corporation’s identifying number, within the Yorkshire traffic area.

When the 1930 Act came into effect at the end of 1931, Hull Corporation was granted a total of thirty-seven licences for its motorbus services, the tramways were unaffected by the Act, although motorbus services over tram routes did require a licence for operation. Licences were granted in no particular order, the fact that BH101/1 was for route number 1 was purely a coincidence. The thirty-seven licences included the four services which the Corporation had purchased from East Yorkshire Motor Services, Ltd in 1930 and 1931. There were no further additions the licences until 1934, when licences BH101/38 to BH101/68 were granted to cover new services which were to be operated under the co-ordination agreement with East Yorkshire, also at this time ten of the original licences were surrendered as the services which they held were withdrawn.

In the period from 1931 to 1986, whilst the licencing system was in operation, Hull Corporation was granted a total of one hundred and eighty three licences, including those issued to the privatised company during 1985 and 1986. Out of all these, there are twenty six licences, BH101/21 – 26, 39 – 42, 45 – 50, 60, 63 – 65, 67, 68, 70, 74, 75 and 77, for which the corresponding services are not known. The records of the Corporation were lost during the air-raids of May, 1941. By the mid 1980’s when enquiries were made to the North-Eastern Traffic Area Offices in Leeds, they also did not hold any records of them either, therefore positive identification of these licences are not possible. However there are twenty two services, mostly night and Sunday morning services, which are known to have been operated prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. It is reasonable to assume that these services account for all but four of the unknown licences. Services which are known to be operated are as follows:

It is probable that these services occupied all the above licences except for BH101/67, 68, 74 and 75. The first two of these I have allocated to a night and Sunday morning services on route 46, which was held on BH101/66. Similarly the latter two have been allocate to night and Sunday morning services on route 16A, which was held on licence BH101/76. I have not seen any documentary evidence that these services were actually operated, but it is likely that they did so. I have allocated BH101/70 to the Derringham Street circular, service number 2, which operated over the Christmas and New Year period of 1935/6, as BH101/69 and 71 – 73 were all granted in December 1935, the latter three were, of course, the three service acquired from Sharpe of Hedon, purchased jointly by the Corporation and East Yorkshire. BH101/77, I have allocated to service 22, which operated in the interval between the end of the Newland Avenue trams and the subsequent trolleybus service, between July and October, 1937.

Below is a list of the twenty six licences, with the services allocated to them. The list is entirely unofficial, and with the exception of those noted above, there is no reason to the allocation other than my own preferences.

Mention should be made of three licences granted with the co-ordination licences in July, 1934. BH101/59 was granted to enable the Corporation to operate motorbus services over tram, and later trolleybus, routes in the case of emergency, when the latter could not operate for any reason. It did not cover abandonment of the trams or trolleybus routes as these needed to be applied for in the normal way. The other two BH101/43 and 44 covered not only tram routes but also normal motorbus routes. They provided for service after the end of normal services in conjunction with Railway Excursions or from Dance Halls (sic), to any terminus served by the Corporation. BH101/59 was surrendered after November, 1964 following the final trolleybus abandonment (service 63); the other two remained until de-regulation in 1986, a nostalgic reminder of an earlier age!

Further legislation passed through Parliament in 1985 which provided for a complete revision of the licensing of public transport. Known as the 1985 Transport Act; among the provisions were the complete de-regulation of bus services, to be replaced by the registration of routes, times and fares. It also provided for the privitisation of public sector operators. In this instance, Kingston upon Hull City Transport, which, since 1972, was the name of Hull Corporation Transport Department, under the Local Government reorganization of 1974; was reconstituted as an arms-length private limited company, wholly owned by the City Council. Two companies were created, namely Kingston upon Hull City Transport Ltd. And Kingstonian Travel Services Ltd, the latter had been the coaching arm of KHCT.

Under the new Act all services had to be commercially viable, as cross-subsidy between services was no longer allowed. Any services which the local authority deemed to be socially necessary, had to be put out to tender, operation was to be placed with the operator who placed the best tender.

Under the provision of the Act operators had to submit a list of services to be registered for operation from October, 1986, and KHCT Ltd submitted a total of forty nine services. The majority of works and school services operated previously were omitted from the list. The provision of school transport was in the hands of Humberside County Council. After taking into account registered school transport service by KHCT Ltd and others, the Council issued a list of services which were required, and these were put out to tender. Of these KHCT Ltd gained twenty one extra services. As the services commenced at the start of September, KHCT Ltd had to apply for Road service Licences for these services, albeit only for a period of seven weeks, and they were added to the registration of post de-regulation services also. In addition to the contracts of Humberside County Council, Kingston upon Hull City Council also put out tenders for services within the City, which the Council considered to be necessary, most of these were, however, mainly late journeys on existing services, but two new services, 21A and 22A, were won by KHCT Ltd, and were added to licence BH101/15, and also to the registrations.

Although de-regulation did not come into effect until 26th October 1986, KHCT Ltd brought the new network into operation on the 27th of July, some three months early; consequently the new services were added to the existing licences, although a number of licences were surrendered at that time. Upon de-regulation all remaining licences were finally surrendered. Subsequent developments to routes and services are beyond the scope of this work. A list of the registered services which operated between July and October 1986 are listed below:-

All of the services above, except for the Humberside County Council contracts, were the original registered services, but in addition to these were six sports services which, although not part of the registered network continued in operation until de-regulation. They were on four licences; BH101/61:-service 68; BH101/140:- services 40C and 40X; BH101/144:- service 89F, and BH101/150:- 42F and 42X. Both BH101/61 and /150 had other services on the licences, but the other two had only the sports services shown.

In July the following licences had been surrendered:- BH101/12, /43, /44, /54, /81, /125, /127, /133, /137, /142, /143, /145, /148 and /162, a total of fourteen, leaving forty seven licences in force, namely BH101/6, /15, /37, /55, /56, /57, /61, /76, /84, /88, /93, /94, /101, /105, /114, /118, /120, /129, /131, /140, /144, /146, /149, /150, /152, /163 and /164 to /183. All of these were surrendered upon deregulation.

Keith Easton
01/2012

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