WILTSHIRE Council is planning to cut bus services, despite its transport chief denying plans to do so less than five months ago.

Three per cent of services will be axed if the plans are approved.

A public consultation on the changes included options for much deeper cuts, including withdrawing all funding for subsidised routes.

This was despite cabinet member Philip Whitehead declaring in May: “We are not making any cuts to the buses.”

At the time he accused the Journal of “threatening” its readers when presented with this newspaper’s petition of more than 6,000 signatures.

Now the council says it can save £500,000 from its public transport budget by cutting some subsidised services that cost the authority more than £3.50 per journey. It says people will still be able to make around 97 per cent of bus passenger journeys in Wiltshire if the plans are agreed by the cabinet on October 11.

Cabinet member for transport Philip Whitehead said this was a “phenomenal success” for a council facing “huge budget pressures”, with most other authorities making far greater cuts to public transport.

The council said it had originally aimed to save £2.5 million, but had listened to the people and scaled back its proposals.

Yesterday, Cllr Whitehead stood by his previous comments and said: “We had no plans to cut the buses at all. The consultation was to find out information.”

Cllr Whitehead also hinted that the council could ask motorists to pay five per cent more for parking to support bus services in future.

More than 11,000 people answered the consultation, raising concerns about the impact cutting the buses would have on vulnerable people, social isolation, the environment and access to essential services.

A report published on Tuesday said there was “no magic answer”, but the consultation had provided “valuable information”.

It found that “significant savings” could be achieved with “minimal” impact on passengers by scrapping less than one per cent of total available services, adding it was evident that the “more vulnerable members of society” would be “adversely impacted” by any significant cuts.

Community transport groups could cover some services, the report said, but certainly could not provide “like-for like replacements ... anywhere near the frequency required”.

Cutting buses could unfairly affect younger and older people, disabled people, those on low incomes and those in rural areas, including military families based on camps, the report found, adding that it was “very regrettable” that some services would stop altogether.

The report concluded that there would be “significant impacts to people’s lives, should there be a reduction in supported public transport, most notably around access to education, employment and other essential services, such as health and shopping”.

Cllr Whitehead said in a statement: “We had a fantastic response to the consultation.

“The information we had really has helped us, and I’m delighted we are proposing to buck the national trend and safeguard the services people really need.”

Half of the bus mileage in the county is subsidised by £5.1 million per year from Wiltshire Council as it is not commercially viable otherwise.

The rest of the services in Wiltshire are operated on a commercial basis by various companies.

It is not yet clear which routes could be affected by the cuts.