MAY I please take a few of your column inches to reply to Mr Tony Fellenor and his comments on Wiltshire Council’s bus cuts?

So Mr Fellenor sees bus cuts as the fault of Wiltshire Council. Please Tony, tell me to which services you refer? Yes, bus routes have been cut in Wiltshire by 16 per cent, but not as a result of any action by Wiltshire Council. As the Portfolio Holder for Passenger Transport, I can tell you that those cuts have come from commercial operators running commercial services, i.e. routes for which they get no public subsidy. Examples of that could be the First Group services 234, 231, and 264, all axed to save them money. In the case of the 264, the county stepped up to the plate and immediately ran an alternative service.

“One area of savings .... etc.”. Come off it, you would be the first to complain if we cut services without first finding out just who was using the buses. Wiltshire Council has been commended on its bus consultation process. Government guidance on such matters recommends that they should span a three-month period. This we have done, from January 11 to April 4.

This has resulted in a very full response, around 10,000 in total. Compare this with Oxford, which had around 2,700. Certainly, our consultation stands head and shoulders over our neighbours, one of whom ran a four-week consultation period, issued 830 consultation forms and had only 1,300 comments in total. This for a population of three-quarters of a million residents! And the cuts start in mid-April.

No decision has been made about any cuts in Wiltshire, which supports 44 per cent of the routes within the county, more than any other authority in the West Country. Furthermore, with consultation forms being processed at the rate of 400 per day, the results of the programme will not be known for some months and will then be followed by talks with all those interested parties who have responded.

Therefore, any decision on what cuts may be needed will be deferred until the autumn/winter at the earliest. What is certain is that current provision cannot be allowed to continue in the present round of government cuts.

It is impossible to defend bus journeys which, in one case, are given a subsidy of over £17 per trip, money that can only come from some other hard-pressed budget such as, to quote your own words, “the elderly, young and vulnerable people in our society”.

Please Tony, do at least be honest, do you really want to sacrifice this section of our population?

HORACE PRICKETT

Cabinet Portfolio Holder for Transport

Wiltshire Council