The leader of Cambridgeshire County Council has written a letter to the transport minister, Lucy Frazer MP, condemning the decision by Stagecoach to withdraw 18 of its bus services.

Cllr Lucy Nethsingha, who is deputy mayor of CAPCA, has been quick to praise the action by metro mayor, Dr Nik Johnson, who has pledged an additional £1.7 million to secure threatened routes.

The money will cover the mostly rural bus services, although some in Peterborough have been affected, from the end of October 2022 through until the end of March 2023.

Cllr Nethsingha, who chairs the CAPCA strategy and resources committee, has said she feels only through direct communication with the minister can the proposal by Stagecoach to axe more than 30 services across the county be properly condemned.

She has written: “The way in which Stagecoach have treated people in our area is horrendous, and so I have written to the minister for transport, Lucy Frazer MP, to let her know what this means for the people of Cambridgeshire.

“I think one of the key things for me which has been so offensive, is the really short space of time between Stagecoach announcing their proposal, and the withdrawal of services.

“It hasn’t given anybody affected any time to figure out how they are going to get their kids to school or how they are going to get to work.”

The letter added: “Had Stagecoach, for example, withdrawn those routes when everybody was away during the summer holidays, only for then to come back to school and to work in September and find out they were no longer there – it is just a nightmare.”

Metro mayor Johnson, and his predecessor James Palmer, were both very accommodating to Stagecoach and its shareholder when they found themselves in difficult financial circumstances during the Covid pandemic, using large amounts of public money to sure-up Stagecoach’s bus routes.

Cllr Nethsingha added: “This feels like a slap in the face from Stagecoach and the thing I find most angering about the most recent announcement is that this money [the Covid grant] was due to be withdrawn earlier in the year by government.

“They then stepped in and said they would continue to pay it, and still Stagecoach withdrew the services anyway. That’s just outrageous.

“I do think the government have been somewhat naïve and incompetent in allowing that to happen, and it has been a failing on their part in terms of the way that the bus grant money was handed over.”

Darren Roe, managing director for Stagecoach East, said: “We care about our customers and sympathise with those people who will be impacted by the changes ahead.

“Unfortunately, a traditional fixed route bus service is no longer a financially viable solution for some rural areas.

“Since raising our concerns with the Combined Authority and other local authority partners in early summer, we have continued to explore different options to ensure connectivity in these communities.

“However, the reality is that Stagecoach alone cannot deliver solutions to the challenges involved or save the bus routes at risk.”

Cllr Nethsingha’s letter will request the minister to ask that the government urgently reviews the current regulations which allow bus companies to simply cancel routes at such short notice.

It will also ask that the bus improvement money is given directly to bus operators rather than the authorities who are responsible for them.

In a message to the rural bus users of Cambridgeshire, Cllr Nethsingha said: “We will do everything that we can to not only preserve, but improve bus services over time; and I hope very much that mayor Johnson, in putting these routes out to tender so quickly, will allow them to continue.

“Longer term, we really need a bus network for the people who reply and depend on it, not just for Stagecoach and its shareholders.”

The next meeting of the CCC’s strategy and resources committee is on October 20.