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Bus services to be axed

30 March 2009

The furore over our local buses keeps growing. Forget Fred Goodwin or fat-cat bankers, our local Public Enemy is First Bus instead.

It’s not just because they’ve cut the bus service to villages like Hutton, Langford or Churchill entirely, although that’s bad enough - just try getting into Weston for your shopping or to visit a doctor if you’re too elderly to drive a car. It’s the high-handed way they’ve gone about it; a bald announcement of the cuts without even a token consultation of the people who they’re abandoning on the roadside.

I was in Hutton last week and the bus service was the first thing on everybody’s lips. It wasn’t just the elderly residents who were worried either. Hutton is a proper community where people look out for their neighbours, so all the rest of the village was worried about their fellow residents too.

There was a fair amount of anger at the way First have behaved, too. I doubt their Managing Director is planning to visit Hutton in the near future but, if he’s planning a nice weekend trip to a picturesque Somerset village, he’d better keep quiet about his day job. I doubt he’d get out unscathed.

And we shouldn’t give in without a fight either. We’re lucky to have a competing bus firm in Weston, in the shape of ACL, so I’ve written to them asking whether they’d be interested in filling some of the gaps which First have left. I’ve also written to First Bus, letting them know how people feel about the way they’ve behaved and demanding they consult us properly. We will have to wait and see how they react, but I doubt First Bus have many friends in Weston and the villages at the moment. I will let everybody know how we get on.