Bus giant Stagecoach has been fined £97,000 after a traffic commissioner ruled that the company had been running unreliable services in Oxfordshire.

For the next 12 months, the company will not be allowed to run a service between Wallingford and Henley. This service, which ran to Heathrow Airport, has already been scrapped.

The company has also been banned from extending its services between Oxford and Wallingford and Oxford and Abingdon.

Stagecoach Oxford's managing director, Inglis Lyon, said the company's fine would come in the form of a limit being placed on the amount of fuel duty rebate which could be claimed.

He said: "The Traffic Commissioners have been using these public inquiries as a method of pulling bus operators up by their boot-straps.

"If the end result is passengers getting a better service then all well and good." Earlier this year, western area traffic commissioner Christopher Heaps called on Stagecoach Oxford to answer reports of services not running to timetable.

The inquiry at Oxford Town Hall heard that following complaints, a Department of Transport bus monitor's detailed analysis of the company's X33 and X39 services in February showed they were often late.

The X33 ran from Oxford to Abingdon and the X39 ran from Oxford via Wallingford to Heathrow.

Shortly before the public inquiry, Stagecoach announced it would be cutting nine unprofitable routes across Oxfordshire, including the X33 and the X39.

* It wasn't all bad news for the company yesterday. It was announced that the flagship Oxford Tube, which runs between Oxford and London, is in line for the Sema Group Innovation award, following the introduction of its wheelchair-accessible coaches earlier this year.

Story date: Tuesday 23 November

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