Mum Lorna Pollard was fuming after a bus driver terminated the Salisbury to Marlborough service at Pewsey and refused to take her special needs son home after work.

The confused youngster, 22, was left to walk five miles home alone.

Her son Dane has been taking the X5 service, run by Salisbury Reds, from Pewsey to his home in Oare at 6.30pm every night for two years as he returns home from his job as a cleaner at Lloyd’s Bank in Pewsey High Street.

But last Wednesday the driver told him that he was terminating the service early because there had been no passengers between Salisbury and Pewsey.

He told Dane the decision was in line with company policy. The company has since said this isn’t its policy.

Mr Pollard, who was a pupil at St Joseph’s Specialist School in Surrey, was forced to walk back to his home in Portway, Oare.

Ms Pollard said: “I was furious when Dane got home because I rely on the bus to keep him safe and bring him home from work and the driver would have been able to see he had learning difficulties.

“He had the door shut in his face. He was dumfounded and didn’t know what to do.

“He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t get on the bus when he’d been getting it for the last two years.

“It took him an hour-and-a-half to walk home with no high visibility clothing along a very dangerous main road with no footpath, so he could have been knocked over.”

A spokesman for Salisbury Reds said it is not company policy to terminate the service early and said the driver had made a genuine error.

Andrew Sherrington, operations manager for Salisbury Reds, said: “I am aware of a complaint made to our team on May 22. At Salisbury Reds, both the safety of our passengers and the high quality service we provide to customers are incredibly important to us.

“In view of this, we are carrying out our own internal investigation and are in direct contact with the individuals involved to address the issues raised and do everything we can to resolve any outstanding concerns.”

Salisbury Reds has since written to Mr Pollard and his mum to apologise and the bus driver has said also sorry to Dane.

Ms Pollard said: “I’m happy that they have taken it seriously and they have promised that nothing like this will happen again. Hopefully they will learn from this so that nobody is ever left at the side of the road again.”