September 30, 2021 2.20 pm This story is over 30 months old

Buses cancelled as Stagecoach blames staff shortages on Brexit and COVID-19

Several cuts today and more to follow on Monday
| Photo: Stagecoach
By Local Democracy Reporter

Stagecoach East Midlands says it is “working round the clock” to tackle staff shortages that are causing Lincolnshire bus services to be temporarily cancelled, as the impact of Brexit continues to affect business.

Services in Skegness and Lincoln have been affected by staff shortages at Stagecoach, causing timetables to be altered and some scheduled routes are being cancelled.

It is unclear how long these issues will continue to affect timetables in the county, but Stagecoach says the staff shortages are a result of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic.

On Thursday, seven Lincoln routes and 20 in Skegness were cancelled. And from Monday, October 4 there will be cutbacks on services 1, 2 and 3 in Skegness and 6, X6, 9, 15 and 16 in Lincoln.

As well as this, two services to Gainsborough were also cancelled on Thursday as the business tries desperately to fix the staff shortage problem.

A spokesperson for Stagecoach told The Lincolnite: “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.

“Where we do have to make changes to our bus services, we are providing live updates to our customers through our social media channels.”

For more information on the timetables and to keep updated, visit the Stagecoach East Midlands Twitter page.