THE free bus pass scheme for pensioners should be reformed to stop bus services in rural North Yorkshire suffering from increasing financial crisis, county councillors have said.

A report on public transport in North Yorkshire, compiled by county councillors and accepted by the council's Executive on Tuesday, said the authority needs to lobby the Government for changes to the bus pass scheme so passengers can make voluntary contributions, and lower the financial strain it puts on both the council and bus companies.

Cllr Robert Heseltine was the chairman of the task group behind the report, and said consultations around the county have shown that faced with making a monetary contribution for their transport, or losing the service altogether, many older people would chose to pay - something the current rules of the concessionary bus pass scheme prevent.

With major cuts to Government grants, the county council needs to come up with radical solutions to stop rural isolation and loneliness, rural economic decline, and an irreversible decline in quality of life in rural areas, Cllr Heseltine added, and transport services are an important part of that plan.

Shrinking transports budgets and the problems this brings for access to essential services have hit rural areas like North Yorkshire particularly hard, he said.

"There's something obscene in the concentration of millions of pounds of investment in the cities agenda, while there is nothing for rural areas.

"The Government funds rural urban Britain 50 percent more than the rural cousins, we are the poor relations."

The paper presented on Tuesday suggested a series of changes to help the council guarantee a core level of access to services, including more use of volunteer drivers to run weekend services, new toolkits to help community transport schemes get up and running, more help for voluntary car schemes, and opening up school buses to the rest of the community.

Cllr Heseltine added: "Necessity is the mother of invention, and if the Government is unable or unwilling to fund rural services, we have to do something different. We are not prepared to stand idly by and see services deteriorate."

The report has been produced after major cuts to bus subsidies in the county, when councillors had to slash £2 million from the £6.4 million budget to make ends meet after cuts to the council's Government grant.