THE director of an Ellesmere-based bus company has welcomed a report suggesting rural bus routes across Shropshire should be improved.

Gareth Davies, who runs Lakeside Coaches, says his firm would welcome the opportunity to provide more services, but a lack of funding often makes rural routes unviable.

His comments come after a report was published suggesting Shropshire Council could do more to fund rural bus routes, including a route linking Overton, Ellesmere and Whitchurch.

Mr Davies said he would happily work with Shropshire Council to explore new bus routes.

“The highlighted findings of the report make interesting reading,” said Mr Davies. “Here at Lakeside Coaches we are keen to champion rural public transport, which we do through our network of six bus routes serving mid and north Shropshire.

“The challenge in rural areas where population densities are low is to make services viable and nearly always this requires significant support from the local authority, which in fairness Shropshire Council always try their best.

“As an expanding and well established company in the area for more than 40 years we feel that we know the local demands on public and school transport well.

“Therefore using this knowledge we always want to be involved in evolving solutions and would appreciate any increase in public transport spending to facilitate this to provide a better local bus network for our community.”