Residents in and around Warwick and Leamington frustrated at ongoing issues with buses

For more than a month, residents have been posting on social media about problems with Stagecoach buses – with the majority of issues being with the X17 service.

Warwick resident Paul Garner has complained to Stagecoach after the bus failed to stop for his son and has also spoken to other residents about the issues..

Paul says the issues are still ongoing – which has left his son to travel to school by bike.

He said: “The problems are ongoing, we have had buses arriving very early and not at all. The app continues to show buses that then disappear for no reason.

"We have had our own experiences with cancelled buses, buses terminated in Leamington leaving children in the dark and rain.

"Add in buses not stopping for people, it becomes very frustrating.

"After half term my son will not be using the service to go to school and will be cycling, the service provided is totally unreliable. My son will need to cycle a 19km round trip now.

"Stagecoach have become known locally as the Teflon bus company as nothing sticks.

"I still receive messages from people complaining about the service but sadly I do not have the energy to fight a national company that will not accept the failings.”

Responding to Paul’s complaint, a spokesperson from Stagecoach said: “We have investigated Mr Garner’s complaint and can confirm the driver accidently missed the bus stop his son was waiting at.

"We have reviewed the CCTV and at the time it was extremely dark and even with the driver travelling at 20 mph it was difficult to see the intending passengers at this location.

"We have contacted Mr Garner and apologised for the issue.”

Warwick and Leamington MP Matt Western has also been involved. He said: “A number of constituents have been in touch to raise their concerns about the services provided by Stagecoach, in particular the X17 and X1 buses

"I have written to Stagecoach and am meeting them to discuss these issues. Our community needs reliable services.”

Responding to the issues, a spokesperson from Stagecoach said: “We continue to operate the vast majority of our services in line with our timetable.

“However, we appreciate that the UK-wide bus driver shortage has been impacting some services on a day-to-day basis and are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers.

“We have seen a strong uptake in driver vacancies.

“However, it can take around three months to fully train someone to driver a bus.

“In the short term we are using agency staff to boost our driver numbers.

“Currently a bigger influence on services has not been driver related but the volume and severity of roadworks in the area.

"We are doing our best to mitigate the problems and re-routing buses to less impacted areas.

"Each day we seek to deploy our resources in a way that maximises the number of people who have access to bus services, while at the same time seeking to ensure less populated areas remain connected and protecting last journeys of the day to give people confidence that they can get home.”