MUM Kay Sarraff is furious after the last evening bus from Chippenham to Calne drove off, leaving her teenage daughter stranded in the town late at night.

Mrs Sarraff, of Azalea Close, Calne, said her daughter Amy, 16, and her friend, Cherie-Anne Punshon, also 16, arrived at Chippenham bus station just as the 11.35pm bus was leaving. The girls attempted to flag down the driver, only for him to look at his watch and laugh.

"You hear so often of young girls being attacked, yet the driver just deliberately drove off leaving two young girls stranded," she said.

Amy had enough money with her to get a taxi back home, but Mrs Sarraff said the driver could not have known this.

She said she is shocked that the driver saw them and carried on regardless.

"I can't understand how a responsible adult could be so thoughtless and so unconcerned that two teenage girls may not have been able to get home late at night."

Amy uses the First Bus service between Calne and Chippenham, which her mother says is hit and miss at best.

On Sunday February 24, the day after she was left at the bus station, Amy attempted to get a bus back to the town, to start work at 3pm. The bus did not turn up and she was late for work.

Mrs Sarraff said the same thing happened two weeks later, and on March 12, after telephoning to complain twice, she wrote to the company's Bath headquarters to complain about the service.

Last week she received free bus tickets, but no satisfactory explanation.

No one was available to comment when contacted by the Gazette.

Christine Molano, from Castle Combe, is also unhappy about her local bus service. She said she recently took a Coachstyle bus into Chippenham after letting her son use her car.

But when it arrived at Sheldon School, it was checked by police officers who refused to let it carry on.

An officer spoke to the driver of another bus and told her it would take her to Chippenham bus station, which is near the architects' office where she works as an administrator.

She said she got on the bus but minutes later realised something was wrong. "After meandering around the back streets of Chippenham, the driver turned right and alarm bells started ringing," she said.

She asked another passenger and found out that the bus was, in fact, going to Bath. The driver stopped to let Mrs Molano get off the bus and told her another bus, which would take her into Chippenham, would be along in five minutes.

Half an hour later the bus arrived, but the driver refused to take tickets from the other bus as they were for a different company.

He demanded that Mrs Molano and a Spanish tourist who had also been on the both buses, pay an extra 70p.

"What the Spanish girl thought of this example of British hospitality and efficiency I can only imagine," she said. "As for me I was an hour late for work."

Mrs Molano says she cannot understand why the police had to carry out the spot check in the middle of rush hour.

She said: "It can be quite restful going to work on the bus, but there are so many problems that you can't rely on it."

A spokesman for Coachstyle said the police had carried out a routine inspection and found the buzzer on the emergency door was not working.

The driver fixed it, but by this time the police report had been filled out and the bus had to be taken off the road to be checked.