Bus operator Stagecoach apologises as dozens of Mansfield services cancelled daily

Stagecoach East Midlands says it is suffering staff shortages, leading to large number of cancellations each day – more than 120 services have been cancelled today, Wednesday.

However, it says a large number of people are currently being trained as drivers, which should help ease the situation going forward.

A Stagecoach spokeswoman said: “We are still experiencing some staff shortages across our operations, the same issues which are also affecting the transport and logistics sector.

“As a result, we have had to cancel some journeys, to ensure thet majority of services, including essential routes, continue running.”

Stagecoach said the cancellations were ‘only affecting a small number’ of its services.

The spokeswoman said: “We have always been proud to provide communities with a consistent and reliable bus service, and historically have operated at more than 99.5 per cent of all our scheduled miles.

“Despite the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, including increased market competition across the sector, a 60 per cent increase in retirees and Covid-related sickness, in the last few months, we have still managed to operate more than 95 per cent overall.

“We understand customers are heavily reliant on our services in order to travel to education, work and leisure activities, but occasionally we are forced to cancel certain services.

“If we see no viable way of running them at that time due to issues outside of our control, and to protect our essential routes.

“Our team looks carefully at any cancellations and tries to spread the impact across the network to help prevent creating large gaps in service.

“Since May 2021, we have done everything we can to help get greater numbers of recruits in our training school, including recruitment campaigns across numerous channels and an increase in our training resource, with three additional buses and two instructors.

“We currently have more than 120 recruits within our system, 66 of which are on the training buses.

“Additionally, we have drafted in a number of staff from other depots to help cover service and we expect further support from our Skegness team once the summer season comes to an end shortly.

“The team are working tirelessly to address the problems we currently face and we expect the situation to improve as we get more new drivers on the roads.

“We apologise sincerely for any inconvenience caused to passengers, and hope to see an improvement in the staffing situation soon.”