We're on a mission to recruit and train women bus drivers

At Plymouth Citybus,  we want more women driving buses and keeping them on the road. A career with us will see you equipped with the skills and training to drive our buses and help our customers and communities to stay connected. Your success is vital to us and the communities we serve and becoming a bus driver means you’ll be given responsibility from the get-go.

We are determined to build an inclusive working environment and attract more women to a career in the bus industry and our parent company, Go-Ahead, aims to recruit 1,500 new women bus drivers into the industry by the end of 2025.

 

What does it mean to drive for Plymouth Citybus?

As a bus driver, you’re the face of our business to all our new and existing passengers, providing an essential service to help keep our communities moving. No matter your background, get equipped with the skills to drive a bus, support people with their journey needs, join a supportive team with likeminded colleagues and enjoy that every day is different.

We want more women in bus, and that means creating a welcoming and inclusive workplace. Go-Ahead is committed to investing £8m in upgrading facilities across the group to create a better and more inclusive working environment for all colleagues.

When you join Plymouth Citybus, we know how helpful it is to learn from experience, so that’s why every new driver gets a mentor to support you as you enter into your new career.

At Plymouth Citybus we firmly believe that diversity drives innovation and success, it enriches our workforce and also paves the way for a more sustainable and inclusive future. Our Go-Ahead Women network, started in 2023, is for all women across our businesses and includes bus drivers, supervisors, engineers, apprentices, graduates and office-based colleagues. It is a really rich network of women who are already working for Go-Ahead and provides a genuine platform for their voices to be heard.

From Day 1, you will be invited to join our Go-Ahead Women network where you too will have a say in what it is like to work at Go-Ahead as well as meeting lots of other women, many of whom will have been through a similar journey to the one that you're about to embark on. We really want to raise the bar as an employer, be true to our word and remove barriers for women in the public transport industry.

Our commitments have been designed to make our women bus drivers feel comfortable and confident. We want you to succeed and to join our increasing number of women colleagues who are already a part of the Go-Ahead family.

What we can offer you…

  • Fully-funded training and mentoring
  • Competitive salary
  • A rewarding career – we support career development across the Go-Ahead Group
  • Job security – no zero-hour contracts, just secure, well-paid employment.
  • Free travel on our buses for you and your family
  • Pension scheme
  • Rewards and discounts on many high street brands, shopping, restaurants and days out.
  • Holiday

Apply to be a bus driver today.

 

Following a number of concerns we have received following the launch of the campaign, we would like to confirm that the Go Ahead Women campaign has been created and delivered to address the well documented underrepresentation of women in the bus industry.

Currently, only 12% of bus drivers in Go Ahead are women. In order to encourage and demonstrate that a career as a bus driver is open to both men and women, we are looking to boost the participation of women into applying for roles as bus drivers. The suggestion that we are looking to treat men unfavourably is not at all the case here.

By encouraging greater participation of women to apply for a role as a bus driver, this will see a wider pool of potentially talented drivers from which to recruit but not at the expense of men.

Our aim is for gender equality in terms of numbers of bus drivers by 2035. Diversity in our industry will reflect the communities we serve, given over 50% of the population are women, and we believe our work force should reflect that.

We welcome applications from all genders (not just men) and, indeed, those who have other protected characteristics.