A public bus carrying passengers through Witnesham was stopped by police earlier this week after allegedly speeding.

The Norfolk and Suffolk Roads and Armed Policing Team stopped the Ipswich Buses services between 5pm and 6.30pm on Wednesday, November 25 while they were conducting speed checks in the village.

Officers said the bus was travelling at 44mph in a 30mph speed limit.

A Suffolk police spokesman later confirmed that the driver of the bus was handed a traffic offence report, meaning the driver could be fined, given points or summonsed to court.

Stephen Bryce, general manager at Ipswich Buses, said: “I am aware of an incident on Wednesday evening when one of our buses carrying passengers was caught speeding by Suffolk Constabulary during an exercise in Witnesham.

“Speed limits are set for a very important reason and the safety of our staff, customers and other road users is paramount.

“Although we have systems in place to monitor the performance of our drivers including on bus CCTV, GPS tracking and mystery passengers, by the very nature of the job our drivers can spend a lot of time unsupervised so as professional drivers we expect and trust them to behave responsibly to uphold our company standards and obey the law.

“The driver in question has already been interviewed by our operations manager and will now be dealt with in line with our company disciplinary procedure, and we will co-operate with the Police should they require any further information.”

Six other drivers were also stopped for speeding during the checks on Wednesday, including one motorist who was travelling at 52mph and another for not wearing a seat belt.