SIR – Worcestershire County Council cutbacks in local bus services will hit the elderly, the young, the disabled and the disadvantaged especially hard.

Not just my view but that of an all-party parliamentary select committee which has expressed deep concern about the scale of cuts being imposed nationally, particularly on Sundays and in the evenings which will leave many towns and villages isolated.

Pershore’s popular PlumLine service may have been saved after a successful campaign – and now extended to serve the village of Peopleton – and a new Vale Hopper service will give improved links for villages mainly north of Pershore to both Pershore and Evesham.

But this is at a cost.

The cost is that all evening services are to be withdrawn from Pershore to/from Worcester after 6pm on Mondays to Thursdays on both the existing routes via Drakes Broughton and via Eckington.

The picture on Sundays is equally bleak with all buses on the 382 service between Pershore, Eckington and Worcester withdrawn completely, which means that the first bus from Pershore to Worcester will now leave as late as 11.50am with the last bus back from Worcester as early as 3.45pm.

The fact that these service changes are being rushed through and introduced as early as Sunday (September 4), with extremely limited publicity means that the level of these cuts will come as a shock to many people and cause real hardship for many users.

Late notice of a number of these changes at a peak holiday time of year hinders efforts by other councils and bodies to try to plug some of these gaps in services but unfortunately this is typical of a county council which continues to pay mere lip service to proper public consultation.

JULIAN PALFREY
Pershore town councillor