A PARISH councillor is travelling around North Yorkshire on its buses, collecting hundreds of signatures protesting at cuts to bus subsidies.

Councillor David McIntosh Powrie, a parish councillor at Crakehall, near Bedale, has been speaking to passengers about how existing bus cuts have affected them.

North Yorkshire County Council is looking at cutting a further £500,000 from its bus subsidies on top of existing cuts of £2 million agreed last year as it faces an unprecedented decrease in its Government funding. It is currently looking at a funding black hole of £14.2 million until the year 2019/20.

Since 2011 the authority has implemented and planned savings that amount to a reduction of about one third of the council’s spending power.

It is running a public consultation until August 14 on the latest proposed cuts to its bus subsidies, and is also looking at extending innovative community transport schemes which counteract the effect of fewer bus services.

This may include offering funding to ensure every part of North Yorkshire will have access to a voluntary “community car scheme” where volunteers use their own cars to transport local people in market towns and villages to appointments and events.

Areas such as the dales contain fewer working age people and families, resulting in fewer fare-paying passengers to keep routes viable.

But Cllr McIntosh Powrie, 76, said he is concerned at the lack of access to public transport for many communities, which was also having a knock-on effect in other areas.

So far has collected in excess of 1,600 signatures calling on the authority to maintain investment in its subsidised bus routes. He intends to hand the petition to the County Council within the next few days.

The councillor said market traders in the Bedale and Leyburn area have experienced a decrease in customers over the last few months, which they put down to shoppers previously reliant on buses finding it difficult to reach them.

He said local camping and holiday accommodation businesses were finding visitors put off by the lack of public transport.

“We really need more buses in the dales because people are getting cut off completely, with no bus service at all,” he said.

In a letter sent to the Archbishop of Durham, Richmond MP Rishi Sunak and former MP Anne McIntosh, he said there were fears for the future viability of communities.

He said people living in villages were also now more reliant than ever on reaching services they had lost, such as Post Offices and libraries, in nearby towns.

The letter, written jointly with local resident Nita Sullivan, stated the future was “looking bleak” for rural communities.