BUS WARS are hotting up after a family- run operator wrestled its biggest ever deal from the hands of its giant rival.

Black Velvet landed the highly prized contract – which it claims has about quarter of a million passengers a year – by undercutting the existing operator Bluestar when the service came up for tender.

The operater will take over the busy C1 and C2 service that connects Eastleigh, Velmore, Hiltingbury, Valley Park and Chandler’s Ford from Monday.

Black Velvet will rent two new buses – bringing its fleet to 12 – and recruit up to three new drivers to cope with the route which sees 60 services a day from 6.30am to midnight Monday to Friday.

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Passengers on the Hampshire County Council and Eastleigh Borough Council subsidised service are a mix of workers, pensioners and students. Black Velvet boss Phil Stockley said: “This is particularly satisfying for us to pick up Bluestar’s former route.

“Bluestar said it couldn’t run the service any cheaper than it did, probably to try and get more subsidy, and it went out to tender and we put in a better offer than them.”

Andrew Wickham, Bluestar operations director, said: “This is just business and we have no problem with it.

They have taken one from us in the past six months while we have taken two contracts from them – that’s how it works in the bus industry.

“We won’t be responding to it – there’s not enough passengers for one bus service let alone two.”

The two companies have been feuding since last September when Black Velvet picked up a route previously covered by Bluestar. The larger operator responded by reinstating the service that goes from Eastleigh to Southampton but running it three minutes ahead of its rival.

Bewildered passengers will soon be left with no service as Black Velvet pulled out in January and then Bluestar announced it will be cancelling its service.

Both companies are based in Eastleigh but are run on very different scales.

Bluestar, which is part of public transport giant Go- Ahead, dwarfs its independent competitor.

Bluestar employs 150 staff, has 25 main routes with many smaller services, 67 buses on the roads a day and has been running in some form since the 1920s.

Black Velvet currently has 12 employees, six main routes and five college services, and has been running for little over a year.