OVERTON residents are pleading for the reinstatement of Saturday bus services to the area.

Residents say the estate at the top of the town has not had any since local firm C&M withdrew their coaches at the start of the pandemic.

They have reached out to recently-elected new SNP councillor Pam Armstrong, who is backing their call and has taken the matter up with Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT).

Charles McGhee, 67, who lives in the neighbouyhood, says that locals who cannot drive are currently being forced to pay for taxis into the town centre.

He said: "There's been no Saturday bus for two and a half years.

"A lot of folk around here do their shopping on a Saturday and now they can't get out.

"I've got a bad knee, so it's difficult for me to walk up and down the hill near my home if the buses aren't on.

"Some bank holiday weekends I've had to pay £40 in taxis to get up and down the road.

"It's not the best service in the world here the rest of week, but at least there's a bus.

"I've been up here 42 years, since the scheme opened, and we're back to square one now.

"We're back to the days when we didn't have a bus.

"It's a great scheme up here but there aren't any amenities - we need the bus service so we can do our shopping and get into the town."

Councillor Armstrong says she has been liaising with travel bosses about the possibility of running a subsidised Saturday service, through Inverclyde Council's SPT board representative Councillor

David Wilson.

She added: "Not having a bus service on a Saturday is very detrimental to this community.

"Things like taxis are prohibitively expensive, we shouldn't be asking people to pay £14 to go and do a bit of shopping.

"The bus timetables at bus stops need to be fixed for a start - many of them list Saturday services that simply don't exist.

"There are buses on a Sunday that are subsidised by SPT, and for me there isn't a logic in subsidising a Sunday bus but not a Saturday bus.

"I support Mr McGhee's call for some kind of bus service on a Saturday.

"From what I've found out, the only way to achieve this is to have it subsidised.

"I know that this idea has been considered before without success, but I believe it should be reconsidered.

"People who live up here need to be able to access the other areas of the town."

When contacted by the Tele, C&M coaches owner Michael Dunn said that the discontinuation of the Saturday service had been a 'commercial decision'

He said: "It was costing us more than it was making.

"We still provide a Monday to Friday service and that's slowly coming back to pre-pandemic numbers.

"We couldn't run a bus up there with the current costs.

"I feel for the people who live up there but it just isn't viable currently."