A SCHOOL bus operator has announced it will no longer be able to fulfill its contract with North Yorkshire County Council.

Stephensons of Easingwold informed the authority on Friday night that it “will not be in a position to operate its County Council contracts”, which includes 27 school bus services for 900 secondary and primary pupils entitled to free school transport in the Ryedale, Harrogate and Hambleton districts.

The company operated both school and local bus services under contract to the county council as well as providing a commercial bus network that was not subsidised by the council.

The council worked through the weekend to put in place arrangements to cover all of these school transport contracts on an emergency basis using other local operators.

Some services will be lost on various routes until the council can secure replacements, but they have organised replacements to ensure all affected children made it to school this morning.

Transdev announced on Saturday that its Coastliner service would take over operation of the 29 and 31x services from Easingwold and Helmsley to York, running to the same timetable from this morning.

“We know how vital bus services are to people’s daily lives,” said County Councillor Don Mackenzie, North Yorkshire’s Executive Member for Integrated Passenger Transport.

“For this reason, as soon as we were informed late Friday by Stephensons that they would cease operations from Monday morning, our staff have pulled out all the stops to get alternative providers to pick up the services as a matter of urgency.

“Our priority has been home to school routes so that families could be assured that their children would be able to go to school and continue their education as normal on Monday morning. In the event we have managed to secure cover for all 27 school contracts.

“We are very pleased that Transdev has come forward so quickly to pick up the commercial Easingwold and Helmsley to York routes with its Coastliner service so that those timetables will continue to run normally without a break.

“We wish to assure members of the public that our staff are very aware of the impact the sudden loss of transport services can have on people’s lives and that we are doing all we can to minimise disruption and to restore services as swiftly as possible.”

There will be a loss of service for passengers for a time on some routes until the council can undertake a tender exercise to attempt to secure replacements. Details of the services that will not be operating can be found on the council website.

However, other commercial routes remain affected while other commercial operators consider whether they want to provide alternative services.

A post on the bus company’s Facebook page points customers to the council website and says queries should be taken up with the new operators.

For more information about the changes go to www.northyorks.gov.uk/transportnews