At the parish council meeting last night our County Councillor, Adrian Warwick, explained that Stagecoach run the Clifton to Rokeby (via town) service as a commercial service, and it is entirely within their power to stop the service if they wish to do so.

Pressure has been put on the County Council by Adrian and your Borough Councillor and the parish council. WCC has now gone out to tender, and Adrian attended a meeting with the Portfolio Holder and the Deputy leader of WCC this morning. He is optimistic that WCC will be able to step in to provide a bus service from Clifton.

However, this is unlikely to be a direct replacement for the service that we now have. Any replacement service is likely to cost not thousands of pounds, but tens of thousands, which is why the parish council could not fund it. The very short notice that was given by Stagecoach means that WCC have to find the money out of this year’s budgets, which are already stretched.

Adrian repeated to the meeting that he is as confident as he can be that something will be put in place for January, but that there is no information yet as to what the service will be. Once more detail is known it will be posted on Facebook and advertised widely. he was talking about a daily service, not the weekly Back and 4th that has been publicised on this group before, and which is designed to meet a completely different need.