COMPLAINTS about bus services in Christchurch and East Dorset are to be taken to a government watchdog by the district’s MP.

Christopher Chope MP is due to sit down later this month with Sarah Bell, the Traffic Commissioner for the Western Traffic Area.

The cancellation of bus services in the district, including the X12 service to Burton, will feature among the concerns Mr Chope is planning to raise.

“Wilts & Dorset is a commercial business. They seem to be rather good at taking subsidy off the taxpayer and not very good at giving a fair service in response.

“The meeting will relate to the rather arbitrary way that Wilts & Dorset chops and changes the service and holds the community to ransom by demanding that unless subsidy is paid the service is withdrawn.

“I want to get to the bottom of the extent to which the traffic comm-issioner can intervene,” said Mr Chope.

The parliamentarian will also be raising the plight of West Parley teenager, Kieran Morris, 15, who relies on Wilts & Dorset buses to travel to school in Corfe Mullen.

Kieran’s mother, Karen, says a restriction on the company’s child fare policy effectively treats her son as an adult before 9am.

“Wilts & Dorset do not offer child ticket prices before 9am, so before that time Kieran is classed as an adult. After 9am he is a child!

“School starts at 8.40am so obviously he has to travel before then,” said Mrs Morris.

Alex Carter, managing director for the Go-Ahead Group in the South, the parent company of Wilts & Dorset, rejected Mr Chope’s assertions, describing claims that the taxpayer had been held to ransom as “patently untrue”.

Mr Chope had not responded to a written invitation to meet and discuss the company’s difficulties in running a punctual and commercially successful service on the Burton leg of the X12 service, he said.

The company’s policy on child fare was kept under “constant review,” said Mr Carter, and was currently being looked at again.