The shock proposal was revealed to over 70 people who turned up at a public meeting in Hockliffe Street Baptist church, Leighton, to call for a better bus service last Saturday morning.

Nick Cox from bus company Arriva explained plans to be put in place when the Linslade Western Bypass opens in September.

The X15 will be replaced by a new hourly Line 100 service between Aylesbury and Milton Keynes via the new bypass.

There will be an hourly Line 150 between Aylesbury and Leighton Buzzard.

The current 31 Leighton to Luton service will change to the 69 via Hockliffe and 70 via Stanbridge. The 70 service will extend through Stoke Hammond to Milton Keynes. The 69 and 70 services will be extended in the other direction to and from Luton Airport.

This increases buses to Leighton Station which is welcomed, but diverting the Leighton to Milton Keynes journey through Linslade leaves Church Street, Heath Road and Heath in the cold.

The meeting was told there would still be three to four journeys per day between Leighton and Milton Keynes via Heath and Reach, Bletchley and Milton Keynes Hospital, but this is a huge loss of public transport compared to the present 15 buses a day – more on Saturdays.

Heath and Reach people have been taken aback by the plan and a lot of concern was expressed about the changes.

In general people spoke strongly that there was not enough information about the town's bus services and they were unreliable.

Wing residents complained about the poor service to the railway station.

Bedfordshire County Council explained that around half the buses within the Leighton-Linslade town routes were commercially run and the rest were subsidised by the county council.

Problems with the bus network in the town included that on many routes bus use has declined. As a result the commercial companies such as Arriva would give notice to remove services and the council would try to plug the gaps out of its limited funds, but only so much was possible.

The county council's representative said they were keen to hear people's views so that they could provide the best service with the limited funds available. They are keen to know the places that people need to get to, what would make them use the buses more and what would get their friends to use the buses. The more people who use the buses then the more money there would be to run the buses, but the council could not afford to run empty buses.

Another local bus company Grant Palmer and Arriva added that the free bus passes to pensioners meant a considerable increase in bus passengers which was excellent but there was insufficient funding from government to support the extra numbers.

The county council said they would take very seriously people's views on all the issues raised at the meeting.