Update from Stagecoach
Update from Stagecoach - 14 October 2023
This is to notify you about an upcoming change to the Stagecoach service 10 bus, which will affect some of your students from after October half-term.
You may recall from the start of this school year in September, we amended one of the journeys on service 10 so that it no longer serves the Pondtail part of Fleet. That journey generally only picked up a few children in Pondtail, however the handful of families affected do seem to be struggling in finding alternative journeys to school. We also have a separate, unrelated issue on one of our Farnborough 6th Form services (410) which has an excess number of students wanting to board in Church Crookham.
To hopefully resolve both of these issues, we are making some changes from 30 October which means the Pondtail area students will once again have a bus that takes them to Calthorpe Park School in the morning. It will, however, run a slightly different route than it does now between Pondtail and school (via Church Crookham and Crookham village, instead of via Fleet Oat Sheaf), and will also run around 10 minutes earlier. This means that students who use the bus from the Ancells Farm area will need to be at the bus stop 10 minutes earlier than now.
From 30 October, the bus will run at these times:
Farnborough Kingsmead 07:15
Cove, Plough & Horses 07:28
Ancells Farm, Highland Drive 07:33
Fleet Station 07:40
Pondtail, Aldershot Road Corner 07:48
The Verne, Ferndale Road 07:55
Church Crookham, The Wyvern 07:58
Crookham Village, The Street 08:04
Calthorpe Park School 08:09
There is no change to service 610.
An updated timetable will be added to our website (stagecoachbus.com) shortly, but in the meantime here is a poster which may help explain the changes to those of your students whom it affects.
The number 10 which, during the last school year, departed Farnborough Kingsmead at 07:35 will now depart at 07:25, and will run slightly earlier throughout its route. It will also no longer serve Pondtail, but will instead run along Fleet High Street before continuing to Calthorpe Park School. This means there will be additional pick-ups on Fleet Road/Fleet High Street, however the bus will no longer run via Kings Road and Aldershot Road in Pondtail.
This change is being made so that all daytime journeys on route 10 operate the same consistent route through Fleet. We're also adding additional running time to reduce the risk of buses running late. The Pondtail diversion on the morning journey added 10 minutes extra to the journey, but was usually used by no more than 5-6 passengers per day. Unfortunately this does mean that the small handful of students who used that journey last year may need to make their way to the alternative bus stops on Fleet Road/High Street in order to catch the number 10.
We'd also like to advise students in the Ancells Farm area that the morning pick-up on the number 10 will be slightly earlier than last year. The bus is due at Ancells Farm (Highland Drive) at 07:43, rather than 07:53 last year.
There is no change to the 610 service to & from Church Crookham and Crondall, which will continue to run to the existing route and timetable. (This bus calls via Pondtail in the afternoon, but not in the morning. Therefore students can be dropped off in the Pondtail area in the afternoon as before.)
I am sorry that it has not been possible to confirm these changes before the students finished for the summer break, as we had ideally hoped to do. We had been liaising with Hampshire County Council regarding the 610 service, which had been due to finish at the end of the last school year, therefore we'd been unable to finalise our plans for September until now. We can now confirm that the 610 service will continue unchanged,
I have attached an updated timetable for service 10, as well as the current timetable for the 610, in case these are of use to your students. There is also some information about upcoming service changes in the area at the link below:
18 August 2023
