LOCAL users of Crediton and District Community Transport have been assured that they will see little change to the service they receive after it was announced this week that the Limited Company which operates it has gone into voluntary liquidation.

To ensure the survival of the service, its community transport operations have been combined with those of Tiverton and District Community Transport Association.

Faye Ashton, who is managing the new group, said: "The Crediton Community Transport group runs various schemes such as the Ring-and Ride bus, volunteer cars to hospitals and wheelchair-adapted vehicles in their area.

"Increasing costs and decreasing grants means they have been in severe financial difficulties and, sadly, are having to close.

"In order that these services, so essential to their users, continue to run, the Tiverton group, which runs similar schemes in the Tiverton district, has offered to take over the services in Crediton, allowing them to continue without a break.

"This new organisation will be known as the Tiverton and Crediton Community group.

"The Crediton headquarters will move from their current location in Market Street to an office in the Mid Devon District Council's offices just down the road.

"Contact telephone numbers will remain the same and users should see no change to the various services as a result of this move."

She added that the Tiverton services will continue to run from their offices in the multi-storey car park.

"We hope that by operating on this larger geographic scale we can deliver an even more effective service to both communities."

Faye said that three people had, sadly, lost their jobs as a result and all were now in a "Redundancy Scheme".

However, five people had been re-employed and one had taken retirement.

The decision to go into voluntary liquidation had been taken by the trustees of the Crediton and District Community Transport.

Faye added that in the future she hoped the organisation could have a presence in Crediton High Street, despite having to downsize at the moment.

While explaining that there would be a reduction in service at the moment, which could affect how many buses the scheme owned and ran, she hoped that savings could be made through combining both organisations.