WORCESTERSHIRE’S on demand bus service could be extended to include Evesham “early in the New Year”.

The county council’s environment scrutiny panel heard that a £9.3 million funding boost from the Department for Transport will help speed up the expansion of the scheme.

The cash, announced earlier this month, will also be used to improve the frequency of services, access to rail connections, bus shelters and signage.

Panel chairman Alastair Adams said: “12 months ago when there was talk of the Malvern pilot, we were then talking about Evesham rural. At the last full council, [cabinet member for highways] Marc Bayliss was asked again when it was going to be rolled out for Evesham.”

He asked Stuart Payton, the council’s transport commissioning manager: “Can you give the residents of Evesham and the rural areas any hope that it might be rolled out in the next three months, six months, nine months? Or do we have to wait another 12 months?”

Mr Payton said: “We’re hoping it will be early in the New Year”.

The on demand scheme currently operates in Bromsgrove and Malvern, and has seen more than 8,000 people sign up since it was launched in 2021.

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Sarah Wildblood, highway and transport service delivery manager, told the panel that 224,000 transport inquiries had been made via the Worcestershire on Demand app, with the service being able to offer 77 percent of those journeys.

Cllr Emma Marshall questioned the numbers, saying: “The data suggests 50 percent of the requests didn’t turn into completed rides.

“That certainly is a concern because, as a user, if you’re told 50 percent of the time you’re not going to be able to get a ride, you might get turned off from it.”

Mr Payton said: “We’ve found that when people download the app they put in a lot of journeys - going ‘I wonder if I can go there, or there’ - but don’t actually complete the rides.

“So of that 50 percent, not all of them are actually wanting to physically go somewhere. They are just exploring where they potentially could go. But the system picks that up as an attempt to book a ride.

“We filter out a lot of that so we can look at the people who really can’t get a ride, and then it’s working out what time of day that is so can we put an extra vehicle in? Or is there so much demand in a particular area that it is struggling?”