"There's going to be Massive Job Losses" - West Lothian facing "Crisis" with Just Two Weeks till Lifeline Bus Services are Cut.

Communities across West Lothian are facing a "crisis situation", with just two weeks until widespread cuts to local bus services kick in.

In September, McGills Group announced they'd be pulling the majority of services in the area from December 4th.

When the initial news broke, impacted residents looked to the Council to plug the gap, but as the cost of backfilling cancelled routes could well run into the millions, they’ve said it simply wouldn’t be possible without sizable financial help from the Scottish Government.

“The bottom line is, if there is no further support from the Scottish government, we could well be in a dire situation, a crisis situation”

Tom Conn is Executive Councillor for the Environment and Sustainability at West Lothian Council, he said “the bottom line is, if there is no further support from the Scottish government, we could well be in a dire situation, a crisis situation”.

“Up until 2022, our budget was cut by £150 million, so the flexibility that we have as a council to increase that support has been diminished”.

“There’s going to be a massive job loss in every sector - retail, hospitality, late-shift, night-shift, people who rely on these buses to go to these places - they’re not going to have jobs anymore"

Dee Pringle is one of the co-founders of the ‘Save Our Buses’ group, she’s worried it will have a huge impact on the local economy:

“There’s going to be a massive job loss in every sector - retail, hospitality, late-shift, night-shift, people who rely on these buses to go to these places - they’re not going to have jobs anymore if this doesn’t get sorted.”

“The reality is, people are not going to get to work, appointments, hospital appointments, doctors… Some carers use buses to get to elderly and disabled clients as well. It affects everybody, everyone in this community is going to be affected somehow.”

“West Lothian Council, I actually feel sorry for them, and I do not understand how the government has let them down so much, I feel like West Lothian has been let down by the Scottish government completely.”

The government insists it's continuing to engage with the local authority, and that it welcomes steps taken by West Lothian Council to resolve what it describes as a "local issue".

Transport Secretary Mairi McAllan rejected any suggestion the government wasn’t taking the situation seriously:

“It was quite an exceptional case in West Lothian with McGills withdrawal, and that’s why I took what is an unusual step of becoming involved, meeting twice with the local authority and making sure that they were supported”

“At the most recent meeting that we had together, they updated me and were able to let me know that they have largely filled the gap that was left by McGills”.

The Transport Secretary was referring to a number of services which were announced by Lothian Country, and whilst this is good news for many in West Lothian, these are just the commercially viable routes. More remote, less populated areas face the same uncertainty as they did back in September, and with solutions currently on the horizon - the very real possibility of being cut off entirely in just two weeks' time.