alamcculloch:
A C licence holder can drive a bus in a voluntary capacity .E.G. if you work in a place that does buses and haulage and you are a ,say tipper driver.,you could borrow a bus to take your sons football team to an away match just dont expect to get paid for doing it.
Are you certain?
When I first had my class C licence I drove my daughters play group on their summer trip in a voluntary capacity I would add.As this was 10 years ago things may have changed but what I did then was legit.
along sort of similar lines, when I passed my ce, my licence came back with full ce but c1e is restricted to trailers of less than 750kg and not 4t as i expected. So in essence I can drive any weight goods vehicle with any weight trailer except if I’m driving a 7.5tonner when I cant.
It doesn’t answer the question but I am sure I read somewhere about the old proper licences 
HGV 1 Articulated
HGV 2 Multi Axle Rigid
HGV 3 Two Axle Rigid
Then the other classes of coaches and buses.
Was there a Multi Axle PSV licence? and I think a 6 or 8 wheel crane could be driven on a Class 3 HGV.
Is this how it was? It makes sense because a crane is empty when travelling down the road and a bus is a bus is a bus regardless of the amount of wheels or axles. I imagine it was the gross weight that mattered.
wood73:
along sort of similar lines, when I passed my ce, my licence came back with full ce but c1e is restricted to trailers of less than 750kg and not 4t as i expected. So in essence I can drive any weight goods vehicle with any weight trailer except if I’m driving a 7.5tonner when I cant.
I think I know the reason as mine is the same -
I had C1 and C1+E restricted as I passed my car test before 1997 and the expiry date on those is my 70th birthday
The CE (HGV class 1 at the time) has the usual 5 year expiry date
The reason it is listed seperately is for the expiry dates and for no other purpose
CE means you can drive ANY LGV 
My mate used to drive a coach for an orchestra that was built from new to be half seats and the back half for carrying the equipment. That caused a right load of hassle at the borders, so much so that they put him through his PSV (he already had his HGV) just to be safe all round. None of the passengers were 'fare-paying, it wasn’t for hire or reward, but a coach driver couldn’t drive it because it carried the equipment like a truck and not packed in the underneath storage, so they insisted it was a truck and needed an HGV.
Just a thought, Could you buy a coach and run it to take your large family about on holidays, parties etc with just an HGV?
I believe you could have a private coach and drive that with a car licence. There are folks who drive historic buses on the car licence.If you are not doing any sort of commercial work then should be no problem.
I would have thought the weight limits ( 7.5 &17 tonne) would still apply. I know lots of the stock car lads are breaking the law about it, but then again VOSA would much prefer to get all heavy with truck drivers for little mistakes than hit people who don’t give a sh**.
alamcculloch:
There are folks who drive historic buses on the car licence.
That’s right, IIRC the vehicle needs to be over 30 years old. Personnally I’m still not convinced you can drive a bus on an LGV licence simply because it’s not hire / reward, I’d say you’d need to remove a few seats to get less than 8 then re-register it with the DVLA.