An Angus bus company has been accused of leaving school pupils “stranded” in Dundee after midnight.
Around 30 youngsters from Forfar Academy were left without transport home from a dance competition after their bus left without them.
The pupils, aged between 12 and 17, had been participating at the Scottish final of the Be Your Best Rock Challenge at the Caird Hall on Friday night, where the school was placed third overall.
However, when the pupils came out after the show, it emerged that the bus driver from Friockheim-based company Wisharts Coaches had already left.
Quick thinking teachers asked senior pupils to call their parents to make an emergency trip to Dundee to take groups of pupils home.
Meanwhile the head teacher at Forfar Academy spoke to the owner of Wisharts Gavin Kinnear at around 12.30am but was told it was too late to make another arrangement by that stage.
Mr Kinnear claims that his driver was not informed by anyone at the school that the event was running late and had assumed that pupils had gone home with their parents who had watched the event.
In an hour and a half you’d have thought someone would have come out and told the driver what was happening.
Cherie Butler, whose third-year son Adam was one of the pupils affected, said the children were “upset, tired and exhausted”.
She said: “They kids did very well, they came third at the competition. It was all excitement and then the bus wasn’t there.
“The show finished between 11.30pm and midnight, later than the 11pm finish time, granted.
“But it’s not acceptable leaving children stranded in the middle of Dundee in the early hours of the morning.
“I also got a call from a teacher to explain what had happened. The teachers did a very good job and I praise them for keeping the children calm and finding a solution to it.
“These kids were upset, tired and exhausted. My son left the house at 8am in the morning and didn’t get home until 1.15am.”
Wisharts owner and manager Mr Kinnear said the bus had been booked for 10.30pm and that his driver waited for more than 90 minutes.
He explained: “We had two buses going back from the event, one on behalf of Arbroath Academy, the other for Forfar Academy.
“The Arbroath Academy people came out and said it was running a wee bit late. No bother, that’s fine. That bus left at about quarter past 11.
“Nobody from Forfar Academy came out to see the driver. The driver was hanging about. He called me up to see if I knew anything. I said I had no idea, but I told him to hang off.
“I did a previous round of the Rock Challenge at the Caird Hall about three months ago for another school and I only had six passengers returning to Montrose when there were two buses booked.
“It got late and we assumed it was like that previous time and the kids had gone home with parents. The bus left at about 12.10am.
“If somebody had phoned to say we’re going to be late we could have done something about it.
“In an hour and a half you’d have thought someone would have come out and told the driver what was happening.”
