March 2, 2001 9:46: WHOLE swathes of High Wycombe will be left without a bus service after April 22 if changes proposed by the bus company, Arriva, go ahead, according to district councillor Peter Cartwright.

Arriva's proposals to withdraw some bus services and reduce others was anti-public transport, he said, speaking at Monday's full meeting of Wycombe District Council.

"This will leave areas of our town without any services at all. It is of the utmost concern and something we need to get involved with at a very early date," he said.

Last week Arriva, which took over Wycombe Bus Company in December, met representatives from Buckinghamshire County Council, which subsidises many bus routes in the county.

A company spokesman said Arriva would decide which network it could provide as a commercial business, while the county council would decide what routes it would subsidise and invite tenders from bus companies to provide them.

The routes affected involve services in and around High Wycombe and from the town to other towns and villages.

They include a flagship route where the services have been improved via a joint council and bus company 'quality partnership' agreement, the 303/313 Desborough, High Wycombe, Totteridge service.

In 1996 the council entered a three-year contract with Wycombe Bus Company to help buy state-of-the-art buses along the route. Now buses could be every 15 minutes and the route is being altered.

Cllr Cartwright said passenger numbers had gone up 37 per cent since the partnership agreement, and the route was being changed to avoid congestion in Amersham Road.

The 326 service from Micklefield to Wycombe to Asda in Booker was also intended to be a quality partnership but the new buses were never bought because Wycombe Bus Company could not afford them.

An every-ten-minutes service was introduced in July but now Arriva wants to go back to every-15-minutes.

The Arriva spokesman said people preferred a reliable service every 15 or 20 minutes to one that was never on time.

But Cllr Cartwright also criticised suggestions to cut back or withdraw other services such as those to Hicks Farm Rise, Deeds Close, Downley, Kingsmead and Wycombe Marsh, and Widmer End and Cressex industrial estates.

Buckinghamshire County Council's public transport officer John Hodgkins said: "Arriva is now trying to provide a network of services that are commercially viable. It has now identified which routes it can afford to continue and which it can't."

The county council's budget for subsidies will be £1.066 million next year compared with £981,000 this year, plus £716,000 from the Government to spend on rural buses.

But services must have five passengers per journey and a cost of not more than £3 per passenger journey to qualify for subsidies.

Mr Hodgkins said: "We would like to maintain as much as we can of the existing network particularly in the evenings, but whether we have enough money remains to be seen."

Margaret Smith