East Midlands - Important Update

From Sunday 1st February 2026, Central Connect will reduce the scope of its operations in the East Midlands, and some services will transfer to other operators.

We’ve been a proud provider of bus services across Nottinghamshire since 2019, and have very much enjoyed serving communities across the local area and developing our network, in partnership with local authorities. However, we are now facing significant inflationary pressures which have caused increases in the cost of operating buses, such that our small scale operations in the East Midlands are no longer viable. This has led us to take the difficult decision to close our Saxondale depot, and stop operating local bus routes which are operated by our Long Eaton depot (this depot will remain open and will continue to deliver home to school transport contracts and long distance coach services).

This means that there will be significant changes to many of our East Midlands bus services from 1st February 2026. After the end of service on Saturday 31st January 2026, Central Connect East Midlands will no longer operate the following routes:

2X (2N) - Loughborough to Leicester

Please use Kinchbus 2 and Centrebus 24, 24A services as an alternative.

9 (9A/9C) - Long Eaton / Ockbrook to Derby

These services will be re-tendered by Derbyshire County Council, and a new operator will be announced in due course.

86 - Barrowby Village to Grantham

Please contact Lincolnshire County Council for details of replacement services in this area.

90 (90A, 90B, 92, 92B) - Fernwood / Newark to Bingham and Nottingham

These services will be replaced by a new Pathfinder 90 service operated by Nottingham City Transport. For further details please see nctx.co.uk/pathfinder90. Customers with long term season tickets valid beyond 31st January will be able to exchange them to an NCT equivalent ticket to use on the new service.

93 (93B) - Grantham to Bottesford, Bingham and Nottingham

Lincolnshire County Council and Leicestershire County Council are exploring potential solutions to ensure services continue without disruption, further information will be communicated as soon as it becomes available.

LCC2 - Melton Mowbray to Bottesford 

Leicestershire County Council is exploring potential solutions to ensure services continue without disruption, further information will be communicated as soon as it becomes available.

Ongoing Services

Our Leicester City services 20, 21 and NovusDirect are unaffected by this announcement, and will continue to operate as normal. We will also continue to operate school bus 517 (Beeston to English Martyrs School) on behalf of Nottinghamshire County Council.

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We want to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers for their support over the years, and recognise the hard work of our drivers and other colleagues, some of whom will be leaving our team and taking up employment with the replacement operators of the services we currently operate. Our team will continue to work hard to deliver a reliable and high quality bus service for the next two months, as we support the transition of this part of our bus network to other operators.

For further information, please contact our Customer Services team on contact@central-connect.co.uk.