A Christmas cut-off for Wick people

The absence of buses was caused by a Sunday timetable operating over the holidays '“ and as Wick has no buses on Sundays, there were no services.

People relying on buses to see family and friends, visit relatives in hospital or go shopping at the sales had to either walk to the railway station or just stay at home.

The situation left town councillor Mike Northeast fuming: "The county council really have been Scrooges on this. We had a meeting with their cabinet member for public transport, Tex Pemberton, in the summer and I raised the danger that over Christmas, Wick residents would lose their bus service for five days out of nine.

"I suggested that a little money could be spent keeping some services going over that time and he said he would look at it, but here we are, at Christmas, and nothing has been done.

"It's utterly disgraceful that, with the millions of pounds in the county council's budget, they couldn't find that money, so that people could go out and see their relatives at Christmas."

Mr Northeast said the problem, which is set to be repeated over the coming new year weekend, also highlighted the unsatisfactory network of buses in the Littlehampton area, which run from east to west, but do not link the northern parts with the shopping centre and seafront to the south.

"What we need is a credible, sustainable local service, not just to be part of a long-haul route from Brighton to Portsmouth, but something like the shopper bus they have between Bersted and Bognor, where people can just hop on and hop off, and it runs every 10 or 15 minutes.

"There's a big new housing development planned for Toddington, and as things are at the moment, the people living there won't have a bus service into the centre of Littlehampton and will have to use their cars.

"It just makes people less likely to do their shopping in Littlehampton and to travel elsewhere instead, which hardly helps with the efforts to regenerate our town."

Mr Northeast said he would be raising these and other points at a further meeting with Mr Pemberton in 2006.

Mr Pemberton said that, with hindsight, he felt that a little extra money could have been spent on providing a bus service on two of the five days when Wick had none. However, the decision had been taken by county council officers, and had not been referred to him.

The problem had been made worse this year, with Christmas and New Year's Day falling on Sundays, and followed immediately afterwards by bank holidays on which Sunday services were operating.

"I have asked officers to look again, in future, at what lessons can be learned from this. It's not just Wick, it's right across the county where people don't have a Sunday service. I have said to the officers that we can't leave them without a bus for five days," added Mr Pemberton.

He confirmed he would be meeting the town council again and was looking to see if services could be improved in the Wick area.