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South East London & Kent Bus Company Limited, Companies House extract company no 2328595 South East London & Kent Bus Company Limited trading as Stagecoach London, is a bus company operating in central and south London and some parts of north-west Kent. The Selkent brand is a subsidiary of Stagecoach London and operates services under contract to Transport for London. The Selkent brand is not publicly used since 2010 as all buses are branded as Stagecoach, but it exists as a legal entity.
Selkent shares its headquarters with sister company East London at West Ham.
In 1994, Selkent was sold to Stagecoach Holdings at the same time as fellow subsidiary East London for £42 million (), with operations subsequently rebranded to Stagecoach Selkent. In November 2000, in line with the rebranding of the wider Stagecoach Group, Stagecoach Selkent and East London were consolidated under the Stagecoach London brand.
In August 2006, Stagecoach sold its London bus operations to Macquarie Group for £264million (). The new owner restored the Selkent name and hops logo. In October 2010, Stagecoach reacquired its old London operations for a reduced sum of £53million (), with Selkent once again rebranded as Stagecoach London.
Between 1972 and 1979, Daimler Fleetlines joined the AEC Regent III RTs, running alongside them. were not introduced to Bromley until 1975, being replaced in 1984 by Leyland Titans. With regards to single-deckers, Bromley first housed RF-class AEC Regal IVs, arriving in 1952, which were gradually replaced by between 1968 and 1971. FS-class Ford Transit minibuses were introduced in 1972 for local route B1, before these were replaced in 1976 by BS-class . These were in turn replaced by longer, BL-class Bristol LHs in 1978. In 1977 replaced the last of the SMSs, and ran alongside the BLs until 1985, when Bromley became the domain of Nationals and Titans.
In the early 1990s, the Nationals were replaced by Carlyle Works bodied and MCW Metrorider/Optare MetroRider midibuses. After the takeover by Stagecoach, some of the Titans were replaced by , before the fleet at Bromley began to be standardised on the Dennis Trident 2 and the Dennis Dart SLF. In slightly more recent years, a plot of land on the opposite side of the side road (Lower Gravel Road) was developed into an open yard for storage of the larger number of generally longer, taller, wider vehicles required for today's operations.
Thomas Tilling gained an agreement in 1923 to double the size of Catford and to open a new garage in Bromley to cope with the new housing estates that were springing up around the area. The roof has had to be raised twice, first in 1930 to enable double deck buses to use the garage and again in 1948 to accommodate AEC Regent III RTs.
By 1954, Catford was operating some 194 RTs, the last leaving in 1978. A Leyland-DAB articulated bus, the first such bus to operate in public service in London, was loaned to Selkent by South Yorkshire Transport in April 1992. Based at Catford, it was trialled primarily on route 180 as part of evaluations into replacing double-deckers on suburban London bus services as a form of bus rapid transit.
A 96-seat Alexander bodied tri-axle Leyland Olympian destined for Citybus of Hong Kong was loaned to Selkent from Citybus' UK subsidiary Capital Citybus in July 1992. Based at Plumstead, it was trialled primarily on route 53 for a fortnight before returning to Capital Citybus for a week's trial on route 123, after which it was shipped to Hong Kong. The garage would later be home to 35 Mercedes-Benz Citaro articulated buses that worked on route 453 between March 2003 and April 2008, after which the service was operated by London General.
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