BUS firm Stagecoach has vowed to resume full services "as quickly as possible" amid ongoing problems around driver availability.

The company's comments come after fresh complaints about the cancellation - often at short-notice - of services running in the Newport, Caerphilly and Torfaen areas.

One bus user told the Argus the situation had gone "from bad to worse".

The company has been hit with driver availability problems in recent months, and in the summer the Argus revealed hundreds of services had been cancelled in Gwent in just two weeks.

"I’ve been left stranded a few times with other people who have missed appointments, school, and college," one Stagecoach South Wales customer said. "It’s just really bad.

"Nothing is getting better - it’s just gone from bad to worse."

Other customers have taken to social media to complain about cancellations.

Last-minute changes to X24 buses between Newport and Blaenavon are among those to cause complaints.

One passenger said: "The X24s are packed since the college opened in Cwmbran, then they got cut from every 10 minutes to 15 minutes which didn’t help, now either they’re cancelled or you can’t get on because they’re full.

"Lots of people rely on this service to get to work, college and school."

The Argus contacted Stagecoach South Wales to find out what plans the firm was putting in place to deal with the cancellations.

In response, a spokesperson said: "As with many industries across the country, we are continuing to face a short-term staffing situation that is out of our control due to external factors affecting the wider transport and logistics sector and an increase in Covid-related absence.

"Our teams are working incredibly hard to ensure the vast majority of local services are running and to keep passengers connected across our most popular routes. We are also taking proactive steps to alleviate the situation by recruiting new drivers and providing a short-term overtime rate to incentivise current employees to cover more journeys.

"These steps have helped to increase service delivery and reduce the amount of journey cancellations for our customers.

"We will continue to keep our passengers regularly updated on our website and social media channels and are working hard to resume our full service as quickly as possible, giving advanced notice of any planned alterations to our services in the meantime. We would like to thank all of our passengers for their patience.”

There have also been reports of Stagecoach West - a different arm of the firm, based in England - ending a route running between Chepstow and Gloucester.

Stagecoach South Wales did not confirm these reports.