On Sunday 25th June 1967, Bristol Omnibus Company Limited (BOC) renumber their network of routes in the Gloucester and Cheltenham areas. At this time Service 112 running between Gloucester, Staunton, Hanley Swan, Malvern Wells, Great Malvern, and Malvern Link, became Service 572.
Service 112 had traditionally been operated by Bristol built double-deck buses, but six months before the service was renumbered, on Sunday 22nd January 1967, the route was converted to one-man operation and single-deck Bristol MW buses replaced the double-decks. The exception was the morning peak-time journey that continued to use a double-deck for a few more years due to the large number of school children it carried.
On Sunday 15th October 1972, all Service 572 journeys running on a Sunday were withdrawn, and cuts were made to the service on other days of the week.
From Saturday 2nd October 1976, at the request of Hereford and Worcester County Council, additional short-working Service 572 journeys between Malvern Wells and Malvern Link were introduced to partly replace cuts made by Midland Red Omnibus Company Limited (MROC) when they closed their Malvern depot. In addition, Service 575 was introduced as a variation to Service 572, running via the former Service 144 terminus at Upper Welland Turn. Bristol OC were not ready to take on these additional workings in time, so they were run on their behalf by MROC as a “temporary†agreement, which ended up lasting until Friday 12th January 1979.
After MROC ended their involvement on the route, Bristol OC made some minor adjustments to the timetable of their workings and continued to operate it for a few more years. In 1983, Bristol Omnibus Company Limited (BOC) was broken up, with operations in the Gloucester, Cheltenham, and Stroud areas passing to the newly formed Cheltenham and Gloucester Omnibus Company Limited. It is not clear is Service 572 was still operating at this time.
| 5 | 7 | 2 |
| January | 1971 | Gloucester ↔ Staunton ↔ Hanley Swan ↔ Malvern Link |
Midland Red Omnibus Company Limited (MROC) closed their Malvern depot after the end of services on Friday 1st October 1976, and withdrew the Worcester to Malvern Wells section of Service 144 at the same time. These changes would have left Malvern Wells with just seven buses a day to Great Malvern, after previously enjoying a 20-minutes frequency to Great Malvern and onwards to Malvern Link and Worcester, etc. To help reduce the impact of this, Hereford and Worcester County Council stepped in and asked Bristol Omnibus Company Limited (BOC) if they could make changes to their services in the area to compensate, and while Bristol did agreed to this, they were either unwilling or unable to run some of the additional services so they subcontracted the work back to Midland Red to run on their behalf.
From Saturday 2nd October 1976, Midland Red Omnibus Company Limited (MROC) operated certain journeys on Service 572, new Service 575, and new Service 576. These Bristol OC routes linked Malvern Link and Great Malvern with Gloucester (Service 572 and Service 575) and Cheltenham Spa (Service 576), all running via Malvern Wells.
The journeys that were operated by Midland Red were all short-working variations that terminated at either Rothwell Road (Service 572 and Service 576) or the former Service 144 terminus at Upper Welland Turn (Service 575). They also ran via Leigh Sinton Road and Tanhouse Lane to partly replace the section of withdrawn Malvern Local Service M33 that was not served by new Midland Red Service 408.
This arraignment was initially intended to be temporary, but Midland Red continued to operate these journeys on behalf of Bristol OC until the introduction of the Severnlink Market Analysis Project on Saturday 13th January 1979, at which point they were either replaced by changes to other Midland Red services or simply withdrawn without replacement. Bristol continued to run their journeys on Service 572, which was advertised in Midland Red timetables for the first time.
1 All journeys operated by Midland Red Omnibus Company Limited (MROC) terminated at Malvern Wells (Rothwell Road), only journeys operated by Bristol Omnibus Company Limited continued to Gloucester.