Shropshire bus services cut by a quarter in four years

The county is third worst in England for the loss of bus routes, with rising car use and cuts to public funding blamed.

Mid Wales has also seen a drop in bus numbers, however it appears that Telford and Wrekin has not been so badly affected.

An investigation has revealed that 134 million miles of coverage has been lost in the UK since 2013/14.

Chris Todd, of the Campaign for Better Transport, said: "We live in a society that is quite prepared to completely abandon certain groups of people and leave them with no options of getting around."

How are people coping?

Communities around the UK say the shrinking bus network is leaving people unable to reach basic services such as shops and GP surgeries.

In Ditton Priors, villagers say some elderly residents have moved after their regular service was lost in 2012.

Some cut-off communities have set up their own replacement bus services.

Oswestry has had its own Dial-a-ride service, with volunteer drivers, for many years and now other areas are following suit.

But analysis of official statistics by the BBC Shared Data Unit found the UK's bus network has shrunk by eight per cent in the last decade.

Are bus operators more risk-averse?

John Disney, a transport researcher and lecturer at Nottingham Business School, said: "Commercial operators have definitely, over the last 10 years, become much more risk-averse and so they are really concentrating on what they consider to be their core routes and are not really bothered about much else."

The trade body for operators, the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT), denied the claim that companies were becoming risk-averse.

A spokeswoman said: "Where routes become unviable, sound business decisions need to be taken and there are many examples of operators continuing to operate lightly used and uneconomic services, or developing innovative ways of meeting passengers' needs."

London, the East of England and the South East, on the other hand, were the only English regions to see bus mileage increase over the past decade with a quarter of all journeys driven by English buses now taking place in London

In Wales, annual bus mileage fell by a fifth between 2006-07 and 2016-17, a loss of 15 million miles.

Experts suggest the slump in Wales could be down to a succession of bus companies going into administration in recent years.

A spokesman for the Welsh government said the figures do not reflect growth on some local services and the longer distance TrawsCymru network of buses.