PLANS to cut all evening bus services in Northwich and Winsford are to be debated by the county council.

Proposals put forward by the Conservative administration are to cut bus services in the towns after 7pm, something Labour and the Lib-Dems are opposed to as they believe it would leave many people stranded at night.

The council is to debate the issue on Thursday, December 18, and if the proposals go through it would mean Cheshire would become only the second county in the country to scrap evening bus services.

Members are seeking to offset a projected £790,000 over-spend in the budget next year due to the rising cost of subsidised services.

Council leader Paul Findlow said: 'The bus operators have left us between a rock and a very, very hard place indeed. We have been forced into the extremely unenviable situation of considering what amounts to the lesser of two evils.

'Some might say that the answer was simply to raise Council Tax - but we don't believe for one moment that our Council Tax payers would agree with that.

'We are left with the alternative of stopping evening services - which in the main are poorly used - to retain threatened daytime buses - most of which take people to work or school.'

But Labour leader David Robinson said: 'The Conservative administration, I believe, is not telling the whole story when it blames the proposed cut on the actions of private bus operators.

'I believe that bus services are not a priority for them and they have shown this by knocking £350,000 out of the bus budget.'