COUNCILLORS have thrown out a motion to increase funding for the county’s buses.

After protests on the steps of County Hall, a meeting of Dorset County Council’s environment overview committee on Monday heard a motion from Cllr Ros Kayes proposing increased funding for the county’s buses.

The motion was lost as was a bid to create together a working party contributing to a transport review.

The motion urged DCC to reconsider the way it reimburses bus companies for concessionary passes and increase it in line with the national average.

It comes after First Wessex, which operates buses in Dorset and south Somerset, hiked up some fares last weekend affecting those travelling between Weymouth, Portland and Dorchester.

The fares hike comes after concern about service cuts, particularly on the 31 route serving West Dorset.

Jan Stevenson, Dorset Travel service manager, told councillors the concessionary travel reimbursement is worked out by a Department for Transport (DfT) calculator and information from bus operators.

She said there are two options for the level of re-imbursement paid to bus operators for concessionary travel – either to maintain the calculation using the DfT calculator or to ignore it and increase the level of reimbursement to bus companies.

In the meeting’s public forum, Dorset residents and bus users urged the council to consider setting up a working party feeding into the county council's Holistic Transport Review, which is currently looking at all forms of transport across Dorset.

They also asked for quality contracts - which allow councils to regulate specific bus routes by legally locking in prices and times of services - to be fed into discussions as part of the review.

Bridport resident Herbie Treehead told councillors that Bridport now feels like ‘an island’ because bus cuts are preventing him from getting in or out of the town in the evenings and also affecting his career as a self-employed entertainer.

Bus action group member David Neylan, also from Bridport, argued that bus services in Dorset played a part in him going to Weymouth College and gaining a degree and a PHD.

He said: “Now certain buses had been cut this prevents my 16-year-old daughter from doing the same and means many young people are now locked in to low skills and low paid work.”

Cllr Kayes said many commercial services are sliding ‘in and out of viability’ and that it doesn’t work to have a ‘one size fits all formula’ for bus services.

Cllr Ronald Coatsworth said: “We recognise the huge inconveniences made from the service cuts but every bus can’t run unsubsidised; there has to be a balance.”

County councillors agreed the report’s recommendation – that the re-imbursement to bus operators should continue to be calculated using the Department for Transport guidance.

But a further working party proposal put forward by Cllr Richard Biggs was lost.

Cllr Biggs told members: “We owe it to members of the public to put some effort into this and we need to go the extra mile.”

'Make their voices heard'

PROTESTORS took to the steps of County Hall in Dorchester the morning before the meeting to make their voices heard over bus cuts.

The demonstration also included a performance of a satirical play on bus cuts by the Cartoon Action Theatre players.

Dorset’s Bus Action Group has also been highlighting a report by the Campaign for Better Transport, which claims funding for buses has been cut by 19 per cent in rural areas in the last financial year while in Dorset over the last five years support for buses has been cut by 42 per cent.