WORKERS who rely on bus services to get to Chippenham from Trowbridge and Melksham are waiting to hear if they will be able to get to work on time, once First Bus stops its daytime Chippenham to Frome bus service.

The 234, which goes through Lacock, Melksham and Trowbridge to Frome, will not run in the daytime from August 2.

At the moment the earliest bus run by alternative operator Faresaver leaves Trowbridge at 7.38am, arriving in Chippenham at 8.50am - currently there is a First service from the town at 6.55am which gets to Chippenham at 7.45am.

However Faresaver, which currently only runs Monday to Friday but will be adding a Saturday service to its operation, said this week it was looking at putting on an earlier weekday service.

Andrew Sherrington, general manager for Bath, Wells & Weston at First West of England, said: “We have worked hard with Wiltshire Council to ensure that customers will still have access to a bus. These services are currently operated commercially and there are not enough people travelling on the services to cover the cost of running them.”

Daniel Pickford of Faresaver Buses said: “We have been working with the council along with other stakeholders to try and replace the parts of the 234 which were not covered by other operators.

"We will be introducing an additional early trip from Trowbridge towards Chippenham from August 2.

"We have also undertaken to provide an hourly Saturday service which will replace that of the 234."

First said there were to be no job losses as a result of the changes as the staff at First's Westbury outstation would be redeployed to other duties.