A BUS company will cancel a service that connects Sedbergh to Kendal after it became commercially unviable.

The W1 service is the only service that takes passengers twice a day to Kendal on Monday to Friday from the Dales town.

Woofs will cancel the service soon, which provides a 9.38am and 12.38pm line from Sedbergh to Oxenholme Station, connecting services at Kendal Bus Station, and Westmorland Hospital. 

The owner of the bus company, Graham Woof, says that it is not economically viable to run the service anymore. He said his business had operated it for 'about five to ten years.'

He said: "There's obviously people who use it, just not enough that's the problem. You cannot keep paying money into something you can't make money from so you have to make a decision. 

"It isn't nice - at the end of the day it's a difficult one, it is what it is. I've been running it a long time and it just is not making money.

"Whether anything will happen with the service I don't know - there is just no money in it.

READ MORE: Residents 'concerned' with bus withdrawal from Cartmel peninsula

"I just run the service, I am here to make money within reason. We have been doing it for a long time and we also two cut services just after Covid and nobody was really bothered about it.

"We thought this one might get better. But when you are carrying two people a day I can't carry on doing that."

It is another blow for bus users in the area as the 530 Cartmel Peninsula service will also finish in the next few weeks leaving many people without public transport. 

The South Lakes MP Tim Farron raised the issue in Parliament.

He said: "One of the clearest examples that rural communities are in desperate need of levelling up is the shocking state of bus services and the declining access to them.

“The £2 fare is very welcome but of absolutely no use if you live in a community with no bus service at all."

Responding, the minister for Levelling Up Michael Gove said: "Well the honourable gentleman is right that bus services are absolutely vital, not least for rural communities like those that he represents.

"What I would like to do is to talk to him and Westmorland and Furness Council about what we can do in order to provide, with the Department for Transport, suitable services for his constituents."