RESIDENTS of Hartley Wintney gathered at their village bus stop on Saturday to wave off a bus service that has been suspended due to various reasons.

Reading Buses have decided to temporarily discontinue their No 7 buses connecting Fleet to Reading until further notice, but this has come as a huge blow for residents of Hartley Wintney who have been using the service.

Bernard Kilroy, a Hartley Wintney resident, who led the gathering said the decision has affected mainly the retired people of his village who use the bus service for shopping, pleasure, and to meet friends in Fleet and Reading.

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“There are also a lot of young people who travel to work and schools in these towns and need this bus in the morning and the evening.

“But I have to be honest, not many people use the bus. But on the other hand, this is the worst possible time to take the bus away. Because people are starting to feel the climate change does matter and are taking decisions on lifestyle changes.”

Reading Buses, a commercial company owned by the Reading council, had to suspend the No 7 service because of various reasons.

While service has already been seeing a shortfall in the number of people who use the buses since the start of the pandemic, the recent Omicron outbreak has caused staff shortages as well.

The company is now redeploying many of its staff from ‘lightly used’ services to help keep the rest of the network running reliably.

But the last straw was the closure of a major road between Hartley Wintney and Fleet due to waterworks, which involved a big detour for buses.

No 7 was the main service that Hartley Wintney residents used to get to Fleet, Reading, and London train stations.

With the cancellations, the villagers now have to walk around two miles to Winchfield station to travel to other major towns.

There is a Stagecoach service that runs from Hartley Wintney to Fleet and beyond to Aldershot, but that runs only twice a day.

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Mr Kilroy added: “We only learned about it on December 30 because I have been talking to Hampshire County Council about ways of improving the presentation of the timetable. I got back a bombshell from the council that this service is closing.

“The bus company did the notice just before Christmas. I am not having a go at Reading Buses because they have a hard act to perform. If we don’t sit on their seats, they can’t run the buses. The fundamental problem is it is too easy to use the car. But people are changing after COP26.”

Reading Buses said: "Whilst we are still in a much better position than other operators nationally, we are nevertheless finding it difficult to cover all our routes effectively. For this reason we have chosen some of the most lightly used services to make reductions which enables us to free up our driving team to help keep the rest of the network running reliably."

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