Go-Ahead

Direct economic benefits arise through the activity and employment generated by our operations. We earn revenues through the bus, rail and aviation services we provide and from these we pay our suppliers and employees. We pay dividends to our shareholders, taxes to the UK Government and also make community contributions from our profits. Public sector funding is also provided to increase the scale, reach and affordability of transport for members of the public.

We support jobs and activity indirectly through our supply chain. The payments we make to our many suppliers for goods and services help to create and sustain jobs in other industries. The spending of our direct employees and those who are supported through our supply chain in turn creates further economic activity.

We also have a wider economic impact. Public transport plays a crucial role in building a thriving and successful economy, and our services are used by millions of people each day. The efforts we have made to improve the accessibility and affordability of our services help to improve
social inclusion and have contributed to the economic regeneration of several regions within the UK.

Measuring our economic impact

Identifying and measuring our economic impacts enables us to improve the economic contribution that we make. Since quantifying indirect and wider economic impacts can be difficult and time-consuming, we have focused on quantifying our direct impacts initially. We will aim to explore our indirect and wider impacts in more depth in the future. The data within this section is based on financial information for the 12-month period ending 27 June 2009.

Distribution of our direct economic impact

Our direct economic contribution benefits a number of different stakeholder groups. The pie chart illustrates the distribution of our direct economic impacts amongst these groups.

Value added

According to the 2009 Value Added Scoreboard – a Government produced analysis which measures the wealth created by the UK’s top 800 companies – Go-Ahead generated £644m value added in 2009.This places us in the top 15 companies for value added within the travel and leisure sector.

Our contribution to UK employment and skills

We are a major UK employer, directly employing over 27,100 people in 2009. The geographical spread of our operations means our contribution to employment and skills development spans many different regions in the UK. Through our supply chain, we help to create and support many more jobs in the economy through the ‘multiplier effect’: wider impacts generated by our expenditure on suppliers and the spending of our employees on various goods and services.

Our contribution to communities and the environment

By providing a high-quality integrated transport system we can open up different regions of the UK to businesses and families, playing an important role in regeneration efforts.

Through our investment in CCTV and our work with the police and local community organisations we help to reduce crime in the areas that we serve; by offering discounted fares, we also help to tackle social exclusion. By encouraging more people to choose public transport, we play an important role in reducing the costs resulting from pollution and congestion in our towns and cities.

We also provide financial and ‘in kind’ support to charities and community organisations. In 2009, we gave approximately £0.25m in charitable donations, gifts in kind and employee time, benefitting many organisations throughout the UK.