The Voice of Spalding and South Holland
Commuters and school children have been left stranded with bus services linking South Holland villages being hit by staff shortages.
Stagecoach East Midlands has been using Twitter to post which services of the 505 haven’t been running each day.
On Monday (October 4) it amounted to 14 services of the connection between Spalding, Long Sutton and King’s Lynn not running.
It’s led to people getting stranded or having to change their plans at the last minute.
The parent of one 11-year-old girl who travels between Long Sutton and Holbeach for school paid £150 for a bus pass that runs until Christmas but told The Voice she hadn’t been able to get to school three days in a row.
The parent, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “It has marred the start of a new school for my daughter.
“No updates were posted on Twitter for the first two weeks at all and now the information they are putting on still isn’t correct.
“My 11-year-old child is the left for an hour to the next service which again sometimes also doesn’t arrive or I’m having to leave work for the NHS early to collect her.
“When I collected my daughter from the stop I counted 17 other children this affected. It is concerning as the dark nights draw in that this is not yet resolved.
“They were quick enough to take my money but I’ve only had one reply to my emails, calls, texts and tweets from a manager saying they are trying to recruit.”
Jessica Whatley, of Holbeach, has been left worried after taking on a new job that would require her to get the bus.
She’d twice tried to get on services that had been cancelled leading to her missing a train and a weekend away in one instance.
“I understand ‘staff shortages’ more than most as I worked in an NHS hospital during the height of the pandemic, but surely this amount of disruption to public transport just isn’t reasonable,” she said. “I am dreading starting my new job for fear that I won’t be able to get there on time due to the issues with the bus service.”
A spokesman for Stagecoach East Midlands said: “Our teams are working incredibly hard to ensure we continue to run the vast majority of our timetabled services and we remain focused on prioritising the services we know are most important for our customers.
“As is the case with many organisations and sectors in the economy, the pandemic and Brexit is continuing to impact our business. We are working round the clock to recruit people into our team and train them in the roles that we need, and we are seeing a strong demand for jobs.
“We apologise to our customers who have been affected by any short term service changes, and we would like to thank them for their patience with our frontline teams whilst we work to get our new drivers on the road.”
Daily updates are being provided on Stagecoach East Midlands social media.
