A HEADTEACHER is furious he was not consulted over changes to a bus route used by pupils to get to school.

Children have had to make alternative arrangements to get to Ferryhill Comprehensive since the route of the No.2 service was altered to miss out the town.

Headteacher Steve Gater says he knew nothing about the changes until the new school term started in September.

He expressed his disgust to Steve Burd, commercial director of Arriva North East, at a meeting of Ferryhill Town Council.

Mr Gater told the meeting that the service was essential to a considerable number of children from his school and Spennymoor Comprehensive.

He said the school also offers life-long learning opportunities to the whole community, including pensioners, and will soon be opening a computer centre. Pensioners also use the service to get to the town centre.

Mr Gater said: "I should have given all of this information to either Arriva or the county council, but I've not had the opportunity.

"The thing that disturbs me most is that I should have, because I believe that there is a need for the service."

Mr Burd said the change was part of a wider review of services in mid-Durham which have improved overall, especially in the frequency of buses to hospitals.

He told the meeting: "The difficulty is that when you improve the service for one group of people you almost inevitably worsen it for another group.

"Durham County Council took the same view as we did that the advantages of what we were proposing far outweighed the disadvantages."

A spokesman for the county council said later: "We didn't welcome this change and in discussions with Arriva we made it clear that we felt the situation wasn't ideal."

But he said the same journey to the school could still be made, if passengers changed buses, and resources to improve the service had been directed to areas hit even harder by the alterations