RURAL bus services in West Devon could be cut from June after a review of their financial viability, Devon County Council has warned.

The take-up of some rural services in thinly populated areas has been very low, so that some of them may have to be discontinued in the summer timetable which starts on June 1, a recent rural transport forum in Tavistock has been told.

The county council expects to hear by the end of February how much it will get from the government for its public buses.

John Richardson-Dawes, head of the county council's public transport group, said the government's formula for allocating money was being changed and it was still unclear how much might be given.

Don Allen, local co-ordinator for pressure group Transport 2000, said he was concerned about the future of public buses to Princetown, Postbridge and Clearbrook and to Buckland Monachorum and Crapstone.

'They could be knocked out by the review and then those places would be very cut off,' he said.

Mr Richardson-Dawes said there was growing interest in 'less conventional ideas' for providing local transport.

The county council is encouraging town and parish councils and user groups to propose solutions other than public buses, such as community buses, taxi-sharing and car-sharing.

Grants for such schemes may be available under the government's Rural White Paper published last year, which has increased the amount to be allocated to community and parish transport schemes.

Lynn Hurlock, the county's assistant rural and community transport officer, told the forum: 'groups of parishes should club together to produce their own local transport plans. They are the ones who know what is needed.'

There are already some moves in this direction. A transport working group in the Bere Peninsula is investigating the possibility of taxi-sharing, which could be in action by the summer.

The 'Fare Car' scheme is seen as 'the best way of coping with the very diverse needs of the Peninsula', according to Sonia Burgess, an officer of the West Devon Rural Transport Partnership.

Local taxi firms have been invited to bid for the contract for a six-month trial. Funding could come from either the Department of the Environment via the county council or from the Countryside Agency.

It would be the first initiative of its kind in West Devon.