Covid, Brexit and high age requirements cause problems for Guernsey buses

Lowering the minimum age for bus drivers in Guernsey to 18 would help plug staff shortages, according to the boss of CT Plus.Short-term sickness and Covid-19 has made an ongoing shortage of staff even worse and 60 routes have been cancelled in Guernsey this week - equivalent to around 5% of all services. Currently, bus drivers in Guernsey and Jersey must be at least 21-years-old to get behind the wheel.

CT Plus is working with the States in both islands to find a way forward. Kevin Hart, the company's Director, said: "Just having that extra opportunity to recruit because people are either going into hospitality or finance in Guernsey and in Jersey and just giving them something different to go into."Jersey's bus tracker app, which gives live updates of a bus's location, is working - but it has been three months since Guernsey's app last has. Bus Users Guernsey want the app to be reinstated, saying it is needed now more than ever.Fergus Dunlop from Bus Users Guernsey said: "If you have a reliability problem which you can't fix quickly because of the staff then please give us back what we call the live bus tracker and that is the sort of thing that helps people particularly if you think you might have just missed the bus."A coding error has caused the app outage and ITV News has been told that technicians are currently working on fixing it.