Cleadon Park's half-hourly Stagecoach bus back on the timetable after furious backlash over cuts

Locals have been campaigning for a U-turn on Stagecoach’s decision to slash its 12 bus from a half hourly to an hourly service, running from South Shields town centre to Laygate, Harton, and Cleadon Park.

The reduction sparked concerns that people reliant on public transport were struggling to visit family, get to medical appointments, or traverse the hilly terrain towards Marsden on foot.

South Shields MP Emma Lewell has now revealed that a half-hourly link is due to be restored.

It is now hoped that a new bus timetable will come into force on August 31 that will reinstate a 30-minute daytime service to Harton Nook and South Shields town centre from The Lonnen and Watson Avenue.

Rather than the 12 being returned to its previous frequency, a new 13 service will be added to complement it – with the services running in one direction via the coast and the other direction via Tyne Dock.

With dozens of residents having gathered at a public meeting last month to share their concerns about the cuts, including an 81-year-old man who fell into the road while trying to carry his shopping home on foot having missed the bus, Ms Lewell told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that it “should never have come to this”.

The Labour MP added: “We wrote to the council, the local public transport, the mayor, the secretary of state, and Stagecoach. It should not have taken all that [to have a 30-minute service to Cleadon Park reinstated].

“People have been up in arms about this. At the meeting a lot of people were really very angry. Someone from my team was there and they told me that people were quite passionate about the bus being reinstated.”

Nic Cook, who chairs the South Tyneside Public Transport Users Group, said the return of a 30-minute service to The Lonnen was “hugely welcomed”, but that the new proposals “does not address the now limited options for travelling to South Tyneside Hospital”.

She said: “This is what we have been campaigning for. We are however still concerned that residents have not been included in any decision making process, nor kept informed. This is especially important considering the proposed changes will be adding to the already confusing changes across South Tyneside’s bus services.”

Stagecoach had previously blamed “disappointing progress” with local authorities’ plans to install new bus priority measures for previous 12 service having been deemed unsustainable and that even the halved timetable was being run at the company’s “own commercial risk”.

However, it said on Monday that the new plans should come with only “modest” extra costs and will not take up any public funds.

A Stagecoach spokesperson said: ‘We have developed a proposal in collaboration with Nexus which could provide a half-hourly bus link to Cleadon Park. This would be delivered through a combination of two bus routes, services 12 and 13 (each running hourly). While not a direct reversion to what was in operation prior to May 2025, as the fundamental issue of reduced customer demand remains, this proposal reinstates the requested half-hourly element to the local community, and should be an overall more sustainable option, as it would be delivered with no additional burden to the public purse, and with only modest additional costs to Stagecoach.

“We are working with local stakeholders to try and deliver this change at the earliest statutory opportunity which, if agreed, would be August 31.”

North East Mayor Kim McGuinness added: “I had made clear to Stagecoach that simply cutting services without talking to local people is no way to do business. I am very pleased that the bus company has listened because I know how hard cutting the 12 route to one an hour hit people in Cleadon Park, but this should never have happened in the first place.

“Bus routes should be designed with local people at their heart, through proper consultation when changes are suggested, which is why we are pushing on as fast as we can with plans to bring buses back under public control where they should have been all along.”

Helen Mathews, Commercial Director at Nexus, said: “We’ve worked closely with Stagecoach on this vital local bus service in South Tyneside after the operator previously announced it was going to be withdrawn.

“We now have a proposal in place which will restore the half hourly link to South Shields town centre from Cleadon Park. This will be provided by the Number 12 and a new Number 13 service.”