CHILDREN in the South Zeal area who were left stranded after a bus service they used for school journeys was withdrawn suddenly in May are back on the buses thanks to parent power!

A new service by Carmel Coaches started this week which will run between Okehampton, Belstone, Sticklepath and South Zeal on school days.

It will replace part of the service formerly provided by the First Western National 186 bus which was withdrawn after a review by Devon County Council.

The council said with only one or two passengers using the bus apart from the school run it could not justify spending public money on it.

Parents were furious when the service was cut without any official notice, leaving 20 children with transport problems, and immediately started a petition to get it reinstated.

County councillor Bill Cann promised to do his 'level best' to retain a bus service and the school also became involved.

Headteacher of South Tawton Primary School Bobby Sutton said she was delighted there had been a successful outcome.

The bus will also take children using the Ring and Ride service and be available to the general public.

'I am delighted the local authority and Carmel Coaches have got together to put on this single bus which everyone can use,' said the headteacher. 'This way it will be more efficient and environmentally friendly.'

Parent Karen Mallett said hundreds of people signed the petition for which she was grateful.

'I want to thank everybody who supported our campaign, our county councillor and the school which has been terrific,' she said.

'Apart from the fact that the children had difficulty getting to school without a bus service, the withdrawal of public transport forced greater congestion from cars in South Zeal.'

County councillor Bill Cann said after a lot of hard work at County Hall the area had something to celebrate.

'The county council's transport co-ordinator Len Darling has looked at all the alternatives and come up with a scheme that suits everyone with a 30-seater bus,' he said.

'This is a bigger bus which will take more children and also people wanting to go over and back to Okehampton.'

Mr Darling said the 186 bus which went as far as Launceston and Tavistock was an experiment which had been running for a couple of years with the aid of European finance but it had not been successful.

'The unfortunate thing was that we were not able to retain a service for the schoolchildren straight away after the 186 came off but it has not been an easy solution,' he said.

'The only way to make the service pay is to make it available to all parties but we also had to bear in mind that with the narrow roads too large a vehicle would have caused difficulty. I hope we have struck a balance.'