Woking transport service will be unable to run after council cuts

The service also covers the St Peter's, Royal Surrey County and Ashford hospitals

A dial-a-ride bus service in Surrey has said it will be unable to run in the near future following cuts from a council.

As it stands, Woking Community Transport cannot run from 1 April.

Managing director and CEO Guy Padfield Wilkins said the group faced losing its council grant and did not want to make users pay.

Woking Borough Council leader Ann-Marie Barker said the authority was "trying very hard" to work with the group.

Mr Padfield Wilkins told BBC Radio Surrey: "The vast majority [of our users] are aged over 80, they are pensioners living purely on their pension, and they just will not be able to afford the cost that it would be to provide a transport service."

The group operates a door-to-door transport service for residents who have reduced mobility or a disability.

Ms Barker said: "We have been giving them £170,000 a year in grants, they have had office space, they have had garaging space. It is a huge amount that they have had."

The leader added that the council had met the group "several times" and thought an arrangement had been organised to operate a reduced service, but Woking Community Transport came back and said that was not "on the table".

"We need them to come up with ideas, thoughts and suggestions that work," she said.

The cuts come after Ms Barker said the council was facing an "extremely serious financial shortfall".

The leader added: "Woking has a huge historic level of debt that we inherited as a council administration.

"We have got to deal with £1.2bn of borrowing, a [£]1.2bn gap in our budget and we need to save £8m this year against a core budget of the council of only £15m.

"So we do have to make some significant changes to how the council operates."

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