No concerns or reliability issues concerning the route a bus was travelling on when it caught fire on the A90 near Perth were raised at a meeting a week before the incident.
Stagecoach, who own the scorched bus, said nothing substantive was brought up at the regular monthly meeting, despite previous unknown issues that have caused the bus to be late twice this school year.
The company confirmed its stance on safety, saying its buses are thoroughly checked every month and any problems are promptly dealt with.
On Thursday morning, firefighters were called to the A90 between Inchture and Errol to deal with the fire.
All of the pupils and the driver managed to get off the bus, which was headed for Perth High School, safely and all were taken to a nearby golf centre. A replacement bus was arranged and took the pupils to school.
No one was injured and an investigation is now under way to find out what happened and how the fire started.
Local councillor Alasdair Bailey said he was already in touch with Perth and Kinross Council’s school transport team about reliability issues on the route prior to the blaze.
Local concern
He added that there has been concern locally following the incident, something he says could be due to the number of pupils on the bus at the time.
He said: “There is some concern locally over the bus, the route and what happened.
“But I do know the council were planning to have a meeting about school buses before this incident happened.
“It is a good thing the council were already on to it but it is unfortunate that what happened ended up happening.
“I am glad the kids were all fine but it is still a thing that shouldn’t have happened.
“A double decker bus has about 70-80 seats on it, so that equals about 70-80 children and then if we say on average each child has two parents that means there were about 140-odd parents who had kids on that bus, so a lot of people are worried and asking ‘what if’.
“It puts even more pressure on the council’s public transport unit and makes the discussions even more pressing.
“It is also unfortunate that the road was closed for the most part of the day. It didn’t open until about 3pm and meant a lot of people going on smaller surrounding roads which caused a lot of disruption, but it was only temporary.”
Perth and Kinross Council confirmed that the service has been late twice since the school term started in August but failed to give reasons why.
A spokesperson said: “Before Thursday, this service had run late on two occasions since the school year started in August.
“It would be inappropriate to comment further until an investigation into Thursday’s incident is complete.”
‘No concerns about reliability issues’
The week before the fire, a meeting was held between the council and Stagecoach. This kind of meeting is held every month between the two.
A spokesperson for Stagecoach east Scotland said that “no concerns about reliability issues” were raised about the route.
They go onto say that all of the company’s vehicles go under the equivalent of a monthly MOT and that any issues that come up are quickly dealt with.
The Stagecoach spokesperson said: “We had our regular monthly liaison meeting with the local authority last week and no concerns were raised about reliability issues on this route.
“All of our vehicles are covered by a rigorous preventative maintenance regime, which includes them being subject to the equivalent of an MOT every month.
“In addition, we have a clear process in place to capture any potential issues through reports from our driving team and these are addressed as required.
“Safety is our number one priority and we will be assisting the investigation into the circumstances involved.”
Meanwhile, drivers caught using their mobile phones to film the incident are to be reported, police said following the fire.