Almost 60 bus services have been cancelled across four towns today due to driver absences.

Stagecoach South East tweeted at 4.50am to alert its passengers to the cuts in Deal, Dover, Sandwich and Canterbury.

The affected buses are numbers 15, 43, 61, 62, 81, 82, 83, 84, 90, 91 and 92.

The times and routes are listed in the tweet, which also includes an apology.

It said: "#Dover#Deal#Canterbury#Sandwich Due to no available driver the following services have been cancelled, sorry for any inconvenience."

Only last week the bus operator warned that growing levels of Covid-related absence could force it to scale back timetables.

Managing director Joel Mitchell said at the time: "We're already seeing absence rates up by about 200%, and this comes on top of an existing vacancy gap across the bus transport sector in general.

"Despite this, we are continuing to operate the majority of bus services for our communities and we expect the current challenges to be short-term.

"However, if colleague absence continues to increase in the days ahead, we may need to make some temporary adjustments to timetables."

He urged people travelling on the bus network to regularly check for updates via the Twitter: @StagecoachSE