A CAMPAIGN to save the No 28 bus service between Minehead and Taunton has been taken to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Public transport campaigner Linda Sparks, who lives in Williton and works in Minehead, has written to No 10 Downing Street to raise the issue.

The No 28 bus is currently subsidised with Government money until the end of March, but Somerset Council has said it does not have the funds to continue supporting the service which would then be at risk because too few passengers were using it.

Ms Sparks was last year helped by West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger to secure improvements in bus timetabling after complaints that they often ran late or did not turn up at all.

But the improvements appeared to be short-lived as passengers started to complain that standards were again starting to slip.

Now, Ms Sparks has told the Prime Minister of local concerns and asked him to step in to persuade local councillors and bus operator First Bus South to ‘get together and help the community to keep this service running’.

Ms Sparks said in her letter: “I am asking you as a person I have great respect for all that you are doing.

“Workers, young, elderly, and disabled need this service.

“As it is a ‘service’ not designed to make a profit, Somerset Council should plough back into it to improve it or better still reduce the cost of the service in the first place.

“Other parties and the council if approached would have excuses and turn me away.

“I have great faith and trust in you and believe you have values in life and you are a people person like myself and have a great heart for the community.”

Ms Sparks is also campaigning for a shelter and bench to be installed at the bus stop outside the West Somerset Railway Station, in Minehead.

She said: “It is so shocking that elderly people and those with mobility issues have to stand the whole time they are waiting and they are exposed to all the bad weather when it comes off the seafront.”

Former Minehead mayor Tony Berry has offered to personally pay for benches to be installed both at the seafront and for the town’s Bancks Street bus stop.

Ms Sparks last week took her bus shelter call direct to Minehead town councillors when they held their monthly meeting in the Irnham Road Community Centre.

She explained how the bus shelter could be commissioned at no cost to council taxpayers by using some of the £31,500 funds the council had available for community facilities via section 106 legal agreements with housing developers.