In November 1994, the events in Darlington and in other areas prompted the Director General of Fair Trading to request the Monopolies & Mergers Commission to investigate the supply of bus services in the North East.
These services (covering Firth Moor and the Whinbush areas initially) proved successful, so shortly afterwards United purchased more Mercedes, and some Dodge S56, minibuses and hugely expanded the minibus network which resulted in a doubling of services across the whole town and intense competition with Darlington Transport.
Your Bus, another operator set up by ex-United employees, entered into Darlington in May 1993, prompting a response from United with further registrations, later described as predatory and anti-competitive by the Competition Commission.
In response to Busways initial route network, and on commencement of driver recruitment, Yorkshire Traction withdrew their bid for DTC on 2 November.
[3][2] Due to DTC's collapse, Busways was then granted permission to start running revenue collecting services from 28 November.
On the instigation of DBC, still concerned at over-bussing and congestion, both companies agreed to reduce service levels by March 1995.
We find these actions to be predatory, deplorable and against the public interest.It stated that while registration of routes and recruitment of competitors drivers was not against the spirit of deregulation, it commented that the scale of Busways actions were unprecedented, and were attributable to Busways considerable dominance in the region, and ability to absorb losses due to free services.
In response to the inquiry report, Busways defended its actions in launching free services as being intended to prevent United gaining a monopoly in Darlington after the collapse of DTC, and only expected to run free buses until the traffic commissioner could bring forward its registrations.
It contended that Yorkshire Traction's attempts to reduce its bid while still only aware of Stagecoach's initial small registration, supported this belief.
It did concede that possibly the free bus services had not been necessary and it could have achieved market entry by waiting for the traffic commissioner to advance its registrations once evidence of DTC's impending failure came to light.