Passengers have been left standing at bus stops following the second timetable change in two months.

The situation has been criticised by Powick county councillor Tom Wells, who said changes had been made to services without warning and had not been properly advertised.

He singled out the 7.30am 363 bus from Malvern through Welland, Callow End, Upton and Hanley Castle to Worcester, which he said had been running 20 minutes late for several weeks. The same was happening on the 5.45pm return journey from Worcester.

The service is run by Kempsey-based Aston Coaches, with subsidies from Worcestershire County Council.

"The timetable is unrealistic because Aston are operating it with one bus. That's not good enough," said Coun Wells.

He said he had received complaints from several passengers, some unaware that a second new timetable in two months had been produced.

"I will be encouraging the county council to consider in future how it might improve informing its passengers of changes before they take place. But without the buses running on time, then how can we persuade people out of cars into buses. They have got to be reliable."

Tony Halford, MD of Aston Coaches, said: "There have been some problems with the 363 because a new timetable was set out in June and changed again at the end of August and people have been expecting the buses on the June timetables and we have been operating the September timetable.

"An 80-year-old lady wrote to us about three weeks ago complaining about the service. I spoke to her and it was then that we realised that she had been waiting for the bus for half an hour. That bus wasn't even allocated to leave from that bus stop any more and so no longer left when she thought it would.

"It's also a very complicated route, because every journey goes a different way. But we use the same drivers every day so after the initial problems, inexperience and change of timetable we feel the public now get an excellent service."