A FORMER bus driver has set a date of January to launch his new bus service to link in with the town’s soon-to-be live rail service.

Former Stagecoach employee Rick May has applied for his bus operator’s licence from the Department for Transport and is now working out a timetable.

He intends his service to tie in with the new trains which will run from the railway station at the top of Station Road from November 20. He also wants to provide a service for children at the town’s two primary schools and the secondary school, Okehampton College.

He is now in the process of looking for buses, having his eye in particular on a red London double decker.

Mr May, who has lived in Okehampton for 20 years and was a firefighter in the community for 11 years, said: ‘I have applied for an operator’s licence which is going to take three months, so I’m hoping to start the service in January.

‘I’m hoping to start with a plan for the primary school and college. I think my audience will be the schools and the college, the mums and the kids,’ he said. ‘I live in Kellands Lane, and part of it is closed off at the moment, but I understand that this year it is going to be opened up. When that opens up, I intend to run a bus along there to St James Primary School.’

He explained that he used to drive buses for Stagecoach.

‘I used to run the original town bus in Okehampton,’ he said. ‘This has always been something I have been determined that we have got to get going for at least the last ten years. It is a passion. I have always wanted my own bus company and this will be for the town I love, the town where I live.'He said the service would serve the whole community, which is growing in size.'It will go to where the new train station will be [the Parkway], to Giblands and to Moyses Meadow and to the original station in Station Road as well as calling at the hospital, to all parts of the community really.

‘I have timed my timetable into meet every train. There will be a train from 7.20am until 10.20pm at night, and every night there will be a bus to meet the train at the railway. I am going to buy a couple of buses; I’m looking at double decker buses. I see this as a beacon for town, for people to be able to see the bus coming up the hill. He added: 'One of the biggest audiences will be the primary schools and the college. It is about getting as many people on the bus as we can and making as many people happy as I can.’

As someone with young children in the town, he is well aware how much the service is needed as more and more housing is built to the east of town.Mr May added: ‘I have spoken to parents because my daughters go to the primary school anyway and I have friends who have got children at the college and I have talked to people who work in shops in the town, listening to them about what they would like to see.’