A COUNCIL leader is appealing to a bus company to show Christmas spirit following the withdrawal of services from a town's bus station.

Arriva pulled its buses out when Middlesbrough Borough Council introduced a six-month trial to ban buses from part of the town centre.

Steve Noble, managing director for Arriva North-East, said: "We gave the council more than adequate notice that, if they were to implement the traffic measures in the way they now have, then we would have no option but to withdraw certain services from the bus station in order to ensure the continued reliability of those services.

"The bus industry regulator, the Traffic Commissioner, takes a very keen interest in the reliability of bus services, and we have to make time-keeping and reliability our prime concern."

Council leader Coun Ken Walker said: "I really do think it is time that Arriva recognised that it is out in the cold over this issue - and, what is worse an awful lot of its passengers now find themselves out in the cold, rather than the warmth and comfort of the bus station which they used to enjoy.

"It is clearly nonsense to have a situation where we have a bus station with facilities other towns would envy and yet see passengers forced out of it as a result of a decision over which they have no control."

Mr Noble said Arriva did not rule out the possibility of returning services to the bus station in the future, but said this could only happen once the impact of the experiment was assessed and with the cooperation of the council.