Anger over school bus delays

by 9.10am and he had to drive his daughter and three friends to school.

In an email to the Examiner Mr Duffell said: “It was 2°C in Shepley on Thursday so they were all freezing. Apparently, the school was told the driver had gone the wrong way and I’ve since had that confirmed from the depot, who say it was a driver who’d never run the route before and therefore didn’t know where to go.

“I’m not even making that up! So it never turned up and they weren’t informed so who knows how much longer they’d have been standing there?”

Mr Duffell said the school was “mightily frustrated” and he believed that if the bus company couldn’t guarantee the safety of children the contract should be taken off them.

“Punctuality and the safety of the schoolkids should be their number one concern,” he added. “It is demonstrably not their priority at the moment and that’s disgraceful when you’re talking about kids between the ages of 10 and 13. How can you send out a driver to guess a bus route when you’re dealing with vulnerable young children on a freezing winter’s day?”

In a statement the school’s head teacher Mr Gary Johnson said he had met with Yorkshire Tiger to express concerns over the lateness of the 410 and 422 services.

The 410 bus had arrived at school between 9.05am and 9.15am on a “number of occasions’.’

He added: “Since our meeting in mid-October the 410 has arrived so late that children have missed the morning register on five occasions.

“These are often on a Monday morning when the children buy a weekly ticket which takes more time. I believe, however, that the 410 still fails to meet the pick-up time specified on the Yorkshire Tiger timetable. The 422 service now arrives in good time and is usually a double decker.

“We have had to go out in the minibus to pick up children from the 410 bus on two occasions since September. It was unfortunate for the children that on the last occasion, when the driver became lost, the weather was extremely cold and wet and they had to wait for more than 30 minutes without shelter.”

In a statement regarding the 410 service Mr Matthew Ashton, managing director of Yorkshire Tiger, said: “Firstly, I would like to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience these delays may have caused.

“Unfortunately, on occasions due to operational difficulties, this service has run late and we are currently reviewing the timetable so we can resolve these issues.”