Bus service issues ‘will last until Christmas’
BOSSES SAY CANCELLATIONS ARE DOWN TO BREXIT AND PANDEMIC
BUS bosses have blamed the extraordinary number of cancellations caused by driver shortages on the ongoing impact of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday in Hull alone there were 21 cancelled services on Stagecoach routes that were announced by the company in advance.
There have been many more cancellations across the region with the only reason given being “driver shortages”, but now the companies involved have given an insight into what is causing this.
East Yorkshire buses have warned that the disruption will last until Christmas with reduced timetables in place until after the festive period.
Appearing on BBC Look North on Wednesday, Tom Bartošák-harlow of the Confederation of Public Transport said that during the pandemic many drivers had rethought their lives and moved on to new jobs and also many EU nationals had left the industry due to Brexit.
A representative for Stagecoach told the BBC: “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.”
East Yorkshire Buses director Ben Gilligan told the program: “We have a lot of interviews going on at the moment and driver assessments.
“We do expect that between now and christmas we certainly don’t think we’re going to be able to run a full service but we will be expecting that we can run our temporary reduced timetables.”