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 Hampshire and Dorset
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First Hampshire and Dorset emerged as an entity as FirstBus acquired more and more operations in the area. It started in October 1995 with the acquisiton of employee owned People's Provisional, an employee buyout from the NBC. First acquired a chunk of what had been Portsmouth City Transport in April 1996 from Transit Holdings, who were trading as Red Admiral and Blue Admiral. They had acquired their operations from Stagecoach, who had been forced to sell some assets by the Monopoly and Mergers Commission after their purchase of both Southdown and Portsmouth City Transport. The combined Portsmouth and Provincial operatiosn were renamed First Provincial. The following year First acquired Southampton Citybus, which ironically had once had a stake in the buy out of Portsmouth City Transport from the local council. The new Southampton operation was named First Southampton, but merging with First Provincial produced First Hampshire. The final piece of the jigsaw was the transfer of the former Weymouth operations of one time Southern National in 1999 to make First Hampshire and Dorset. Since 1999 it has been a story of decline and separation. Southampton operations are rebranded City Reds or First Southampton, the Weymouth operations have effectively rejoined Southern National under First Wessex branding and the Portsmouth/Provincial area started trading as First Solent.
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First Hampshire & Dorset
