Buses in Oldham are performing worse in terms of punctuality than they were before the transition to the Bee Network was made, data from last week shows.

Yesterday (Thursday, May 16), Bee Network shared a graphic on social media showing the punctuality performances of buses in Oldham, Rochdale and parts of Bury, Salford and North Manchester, - services which  joined the Bee Network on March 24 this year.

According to Bee Network, a bus is considered to be on time if it departs a stop within one minute early or five minutes late.

Bee Network provided the data for the punctuality of the new areas running between Sunday, May 5 and Friday, May 10, which showed punctuality levels were below the pre-Bee Network figures during the equivalent period last year on four of the six days.

Apart from May 5 and May 8, when the Bee Network punctuality was slightly above the pre-Bee Network levels, punctual departure times for buses were down for buses.

This included on May 6, when punctuality was down nearly seven per cent.

In the post on social media, Bee Network said "recent performance has been impacted by several localised highway delays", which included congestion along Oldham Road and Broadway, as well as congestion and temporary signals in the Cheetham Hill and Queens Road area in North Manchester and four-way temporary lights in Moston due to a burst water main, as well as general city centre congestion.

Get the latest news delivered straight to your inbox by signing up to The Oldham Times’ morning and evening newsletters as well as our breaking news alerts 

A spokesperson for Transport for Greater Manchester said: “Bus services in Oldham joined the Bee Network on 24 March this year as part of the second phase of bus franchising, together with services in Rochdale and parts of Bury, Salford and North Manchester.

“This involved bringing around 30 per cent of bus services in Greater Manchester under local control. Despite the scale of change and some early operational challenges, services overall have been as good as before, with the additional benefits of an accountable network with more staff and the introduction of new vehicles to the fleet. We will continue to monitor performance  and work with franchised operators to seek ongoing improvements.

“We will maintain an absolute focus on delivering improvements and are confident figures will continue to improve, as they did following the launch of Bee Network services in the Bolton and Wigan area in September last year. The performance of these services is now much improved when compared to the period before franchising and compared against non-franchised services in Greater Manchester.”