NovusDirect - Improving reliability

Central Connect are aware that reliability levels on NovusDirect have fallen below the high standards that residents quite rightfully expect recently, and we want to offer our apologies for this. Our team work hard every day to offer the best bus service possible, but we have recently been affected by a range of issues which have impacted upon our ability to deliver a reliable service.

We have, despite investing recently in newer minibuses for the service, including some brand new vehicles, suffered from vehicle unreliability reducing the number of available vehicles available to us to operate our bus services. This is partly because the brand new vehicles have suffered persistent warranty faults relating to their AdBlue systems (AdBlue is a fuel additive used to reduce emissions from diesel vehicles), requiring lengthy periods off the road for each vehicle whilst the manufacturer rectifies the faults. In addition, we have experienced a higher than usual level of driver sickness, and although we do employ contingency drivers to cover for this eventuality, on certain occasions more sickness has been experienced than available contingency, resulting in cancellations.

We are working hard to make improvements to our service delivery. Additional engineering staff from our Stansted Airport depot have been on site in Loughborough providing additional capacity to return vehicles to the road more quickly wherever possible. Where disruption does occur, our Service Delivery Centre will deploy buses from other contracts when they are available. That's why you may sometimes see larger buses on the service during the middle of the day - these buses operate school contract journeys at peak times, but are available to us in the middle of the day to operate services whilst we carry out maintenance on the minibus fleet.

On occasions where services do not operate, and passengers face a delay to their journey of 30 minutes or more, our Passenger Promise scheme applies. This offers a refund of alternative transport costs, including taxi / Uber fares, to allow passengers to still make their journey when services are disrupted. To find out more please visit central-connect.co.uk/passenger-promise.

Thank you for your ongoing support of our NovusDirect service, and please be assured that we are doing all we can to offer as reliable a service as possible moving forwards.