Coach firm halts school bus run on 'subsided' road

A coach firm said it had stopped running part of a school bus service because of the condition of a road.

Richard Grey, managing director of a coach firm based near Ely, said a section of the route had been handed back to Cambridgeshire County Council for the local education authority to provide alternative transport.

He said a B-road that coaches used to take children to a school in Witchford was not fit for use by the double-deckers the firm operated.

The council said it was "delivering improvements".

Mr Grey said Greys of Ely coaches travelled throughout Britain - and potholes on Cambridgeshire roads were "probably some of the worst".

He told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire that potholes were "taking chunks" off his coaches' tyres.

"Part of the route we operate to, into Witchford Village College, travels down a B-road," said Mr Grey.

"And that road has subsided and sunk. There is fissures and cracks all along it.

"The centre part of the road is so heavily raised that the double-decker coaches that we use have ground out.

"So we have obviously had to hand that section of the road back to the council, and the council has had to lay on a minibus with greater ground clearance to pick those students up."

Mr Grey said drivers encountered damage to roads old and new.

"What we find is that the potholes are taking chunks off the tyres," he said.

"We are [based] in quite an affluent area of the world, but I would say the road conditions we have, the potholes, is probably some of the worst."

He said he would like to see a longer-term maintenance plan.

The council has yet to respond to Mr Grey's comments about the bus service and the state of Cambridgeshire's roads.

However, the council said in an earlier statement: "We know how important our roads are which is why we identify defects and repair them as quickly as we can.

"We're investing an extra £43m over this year and next year into our highways, this includes delivering improvements which both repair and prevent potholes."

In June, Labour pledged to fund councils to repair up to a million potholes a year in England, giving "multi-year funding settlements to local leaders" to fix broken roads.

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