A group of girls were left stranded when their bus failed to show up during their first week at secondary school.

Daisy Burrows, 11, and five of her friends had to be driven to Hillview School for Girls, in Tonbridge, by her father Mark following “operational difficulties” at Arriva’s depot.

Mr Burrows, 43, labelled the service “a shambles” following the no-show at Wateringbury and is worried identical issues will happen again in the future.

He said: “Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday weren’t too bad. Obviously on that route there were some schools who weren’t back due to inset days.

“I saw on Facebook there were already people moaning about buses not turning up.

“On Thursday morning the girls were waiting for the number 7 and by 7.45am they were still standing there because no bus had turned up.”

The older girls waiting for the same bus checked their Arriva app on their mobile phones which showed the bus had not even left Maidstone.

Mr Burrows, a business development director, had been working from home and was able to take Daisy and her friends to the school 10 miles away.

The father-of-two said: “It is not like London where there are lots more buses if you don’t get one. If that one bus doesn’t turn up then there isn’t another one for another 45 minutes.

“The major concern is what happens when it is 7am and I am not around and the bus doesn’t turn up.

“These are young girls who are having their first experience of commuting.”

Arriva apologised to Mr Burrows over Twitter, saying: “The depot confirmed this service failed to run due to operational difficulties.”

Meanwhile Barney Atkinson’s son Max started at St Gregory’s School, in Tunbridge Wells and also had trouble with his bus journey.

Mr Atkinson dropped his son off at his stop at Quarry Hill Parade in Tonbridge, where he witnessed a bus driver screaming at children to stop them from getting onto a packed bus.

He said: “It was absolute chaos. They need to be putting more buses on.”

An Arriva spokesman said: “We take all customer comments seriously and are concerned to hear that a small number of people are reporting possible issues on sections of some routes.

“We continually monitor and review the performance to timetable and capacity of all our services and delivered a network improvement programme in April.”