Great Western Coffee Shop

First West of England is implementing a number of temporary service changes in Bath to ensure it delivers the best possible service while addressing unprecedented driver shortages.

Most of the changes involve a reduction in the frequency with which some services will run, with two services also being withdrawn on Saturdays.

These changes, which come into place on the 31 October 2021 and will continue until further notice, have been agreed with the West of England Combined Authority, as transport authority for the region, to make sure that residents can have confidence that the services they are waiting for will operate.

Doug Claringbold, Managing Director of First West of England, said: “Due to the current driver shortage we have taken the difficult, but necessary, decision to put in place a temporary service change in Bath while we deal with this.

“I cannot emphasise enough to passengers that very few services in Bath are being withdrawn. We are simply reducing the frequency of some services to ensure Bath residents receive the very best possible service available under these exceptional circumstances. By publicising these changes in advance we want to give our customers the chance to amend their plans accordingly.”

For weeks now First West of England has been working hard to recruit new drivers into the business in order to help services return back to normal.

Doug continued: “Bus drivers are essential workers and played a pivotal role during lockdown. Since then, however, we have seen some drivers leave the business and fewer people come forward to take up those vacancies, so I would urge anyone who is looking for work and would consider a career as a driver with First West of England to get in touch as soon as possible to find out what we offer in terms of benefits and flexible opportunities.”

He added: “I would also like to personally thank all our drivers for working so hard and also remind customers that our colleagues are not to blame for the current disruption, so please treat them with respect as we work to overcome this challenge.”

From Monday 1st November, there are some changes taking place to some of our services.

The current driver shortage that has affected the UK has caused some disruption to our services recently, and we want to make sure that our buses are more reliable for you. We also advise customers to download our app so that you can track buses in live times.

Take a look at what is changing below:

Service 5 frequency on Monday to Friday daytimes will be reduced to every 10 minutes [from every 8 minutes]
Service 17 frequency on Monday to Friday daytimes will be reduced to every 10 minutes [from every 8 minutes]
Minor changes on service 11 on Monday to Friday - the 1532 from Wichelstowe will depart at 1535 and is retimed between Wichelstowe and Town Centre, and the 1632 from Wichelstowe is retimed from that stop only to depart at 1635, no other times on that journey affected.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you.