As most of us pay Wiltshire Council upwards of a grand a year in council tax, I’m sure that we’re all glad that they’re always looking for ways to save money. Some of the cost-saving changes, like the move to fortnightly rubbish collections, seem fair enough; others, such as the cuts in frontline staff numbers, smack of ill-considered short-termism.

The closure of the youth centres merits at least a piece to itself at some time but, in the meantime, it seems to me that Miss Mullins summed it up best a couple of weeks ago when she said: “The council did not listen to the voices of young people. We do feel betrayed in lots of ways.” Now Wiltshire Council has another couple of consultations on the go. The first concerns the collection of garden waste. They say that we get rid of very little in the winter so one of their suggestions is that they don’t collect the green bins in December, January or February. This will cause a minor inconvenience with Christmas trees but, if it saves money and means that youth services, social services and education aren’t hit so hard in the budgets, then it gets my support.

More contentious is the proposal to change the time that concessionary free bus travel is allowed. We’re talking here about passes that are given on the grounds of a certain age being attained or of disability. The government requires that councils provide a pass that gives “free off-peak travel on registered local bus services anywhere in England, between the hours of 9.30am and 11pm Monday to Friday and all day at weekends and bank holidays”. Wiltshire Council currently doesn’t operate the time constraint but it’s proposing to bring our county in line with the much of the rest of the country, saying that this could save around a quarter of a million pounds a year.

At this stage I should say that I do have a bit of a personal bias here. I use the bus to get to and from work each day and, despite appearances, I have to pay. Of course, buses serve many different needs; people use them to get to work, school, college, hospital, the shops or to visit friends and family. Some just like to dap around. And good luck to them, I say. But, for a couple of hours each weekday, the main users are those of us who are paying our hard-earned to get to our place of employment, education or training.

Some people I’ve discussed this with have accused me of wanting to ban older people and those with disabilities from the bus. That’s balderdash. All I’m asking is that up to a certain time each day – as the rules imply – the fare-paying customer comes first. Others have suggested that I want to stop some people getting to work. Well, if they’re travelling to work, shouldn’t they be paying to travel? Of course there are occasional exceptions such as unavoidably early hospital appointments but it’s not beyond the wit of man to handle these as the need arises. As an aside, why do we have free bus (not train, I notice) travel? Is it really a grateful government saying “you’ve put in a long shift and paid your stamp, put your feet up now, we’ll do the driving” or is it an acknowledgement of the fact that the policy whereby people should retake their driving test at 70 has failed?

I accept that my view is probably a minority one. Devizes Town Council is one group who recently came out against the change to times but, with a couple of honourable exceptions, I can’t think of any of them who are regular bus users. So, speaking as a service user, what’s wrong with a couple of hours a day where our buses are primarily – not exclusively – for the commuter? And it could mean that Wiltshire Council can avoid slashing services elsewhere.