The Group has been made aware of a number of incidents in recent weeks where bus drivers on the T4 and T5 services have been subjected to entirely unwarranted and unacceptable, actually, utterly shocking, levels of verbal abuse and even threats of violence (smashing up buses etc) from members of our communities.
Our Group, many of whom are your Parish Councillors, condem this behaviour in the strongest possible terms. Nobody doing their job should be subjected to such behaviour, no matter the circumstances.
We are all aware that there are teething troubles bedding-in the new services and legitimate concerns regarding the new routes and timetabling. A feedback process will shortly be made available by the CPCA to capture issues and concerns and we will publish details as soon as they are available. As has been previously communicated, the CPCA have committed to review feedback and make changes where possible in time for the new school year in September.
In response to the incidents some passengers have had to witness, Brian Clifford, MD of A2b Travel Group has today released the following statement to our Group:
Firstly as a company we would like to apologise to any passengers who had to witness the unfortunate incident onboard the 1715 T5 [12th June 2025], in which an unruly passenger verbally assaulted our driver for no reason whatsoever, I can assure everyone who defended the driver we have a zero tolerance approach to any form of abuse to our staff and the CCTV onboard the vehicle has been passed to the police. And for the passengers who helped, myself and Patrick thank you wholeheartedly.
In regards to the single deck vehicle used just as a footnote this vehicle still meets and exceeds the standards of tiger and has the same capacity as the previous Stephensons single deck buses but is more comfortable with coach seats, air con , WiFi , seatbelts and an upgraded standard of comfort and also only 8 months old we wanted to put the best of what we had available on the T5 to show our continued commitment to the T5.
To all the passengers that are supporting us and understand we are doing our utmost best on which a contract we have no say in, myself and my team thank you from the bottom of our hearts and look forward to growing and changing the T5 for the better with you all by our side.
Brian Clifford, Managing Director
A2B TRAVEL GROUP LTD
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