Late on Friday afternoon (8 March) we received notification from the Regional Full Time Officer for the UNITE trade union that a ballot of their members at Go North East has resulted in a decision to take strike action on Friday 15th, Monday 18th March and Saturday 23rd March.

This follows a rejection of an offer to improve pay by 4.5 per cent.

More than 970 of our 1,645 drivers did not wish to support strike action, either by voting against a strike or by not voting at all. Go North East considers the decision to proceed with strike action a matter of great concern and we are doing everything we can to minimise disruption for passengers.

Every effort will be made to run as many services as possible and priority will be given to running services for schools. We are contacting schools today following advice to the local authorities to whom we are contracted for these services, and we are also prioritising services for other contractors such as Npower, Cobalt and the NHS Trust at Queen Elizabeth Hospital.

We anticipate being able to operate a number of other services and will provide a network of skeleton services across the areas of the region that we serve. A full list will be posted on our website tomorrow morning (Tuesday 12 March) and we will continue to update this throughout the week. However, at this stage we have to recognise that there will be severe disruption for most Go North East customers and would recommend giving consideration to making alternative travel arrangements for the days on which strikes are planned.

We will do everything we can to prevent or minimise the disruption so customers are asked to please keep checking the Go North East website or social network feeds for detailed updates. We will be emailing customers with details of a reduction in smart card ticket prices to compensate for lost days and reducing weekly ticket prices on our buses to do likewise following the planned strike action. Further details will be announced shortly.