A RELIABLE and frequent bus service is vital to the West Somerset economy, district councillors said as they voted unanimously to call on bus company First to reinstate evening runs between Minehead and Taunton.

West Somerset Council members threw their full weight behind a call from Watchet Labour councillor Peter Murphy to put pressure on First to reintroduce its axed services.

At their meeting on Wednesday, councillors accepted First was a commercial organisation but said the firm's line of 'use it or lose it' would only work if its services could be trusted.

Cllr Doug Ross said when he had no choice but to use local buses due to a broken wrist, "without exception" every service he used had run late.

"It's no wonder people aren't using services. If they want people to use them they have to be reliable," Cllr Ross said.

But he said the company's decision to no longer run buses from Minehead to Taunton after 6.40pm during the week, with return journeys from Taunton stopping at 8pm, was putting West Somerset residents at a huge disadvantage.

First announced last month that it would be making changes to its service 28 timetable at the end of July as not enough people were using the later journeys to make them commercially viable.

But Cllr Murphy, who put forward a motion calling for the cuts to be reconsidered, said service 28 was a "strategic route" and without late night runs, many people would be isolated and unable to either socialise or get jobs outside of normal working hours.

"This route is a vital part of the West Somerset economy.

"When Somerset County Council withdrew the subsidy for this route in February 2012, they stated there would be no timetable changes because it was a profitable route," Cllr Murphy said.

He said First and the county council had lost sight of what running a public service actually meant and said he believed the county authority could do more to ensure West Somerset was not cut off.

His motion, which was unanimously backed by councillors, said: "This council expresses concern at the cuts to the 28 bus service by First.

"The removal of the later services, making the last departure from Minehead at 6.40pm and the last departure from Taunton to Minehead at 8pm, mean that people cannot get home on public transport from Minehead and Taunton after working in the evening.

"The council calls upon First to reconsider these cuts which threaten to isolate Minehead from the rest of the district for those people without cars or who cannot afford to hire taxis to get home."

Conservative councillor Anthony Trollope-Bellew said colleagues could blame him for some of the subsidy cuts as he had been in charge of transport issues at the county council at the time.

"It was either a case of cutting the bus subsidies or salting the roads and the only option I felt I had at the time was to keep the gritters going.

"Luckily the 28 service is economic during the daytime, not many in the county are.

"In fact, I think just about 18 out of 350 routes in the county are economic, but the 28 was never an economic route outside of working hours.

"Other places have lost services during the daytime, which really does affect people but we cannot go on subsidising things - people have to use them or let them go," Cllr Trollope-Bellew said.

Service 25 and 25A from Taunton to Dulverton via Cotford St Luke have also being affected by latest round of timetable changes, with some journeys axed and others being run at different times.

At the time the cuts were announced, Simon Ford, regional network manager for First, said the aim was to "better match resources to customer demand".

He also blamed changes to the way payments were made for people using bus passes, higher fuel costs and the loss of subsidies.

"Unfortunately, this means that in some cases the money taken on board some services doesn't cover the costs of running the bus itself and, despite looking at a number of ways to change this, we have had to conclude that it's simply not possible to continue running these services any longer," he said.