A BUS company has caused a furore after it announced plans to cancel part of a bus route because of "excessively harsh" speed bumps.

Pensioners in Lower Barnes Street, Clayton-le-Moors, want Lancashire United to keep the 300 yard section of the 6/7 Hyndburn Circular Service that goes close to their homes.

But company spokesman Russell Revell said it would remove the section by April 27 to speed up journey times because traffic calming measures elsewhere on the route cause delays. He said that as the demand was not very high in this section they will remove it for the benefit of other customers, although Hyndburn Council has now pledged to look at ways of making traffic calming more bus friendly.

But Coun John Burke said that LU had low step buses that were easy for elderly people to get on and off.

Bob Tuffnell, of rival bus company M&M, said he would hopefully be putting on a new service for that area but he would not be putting on low step buses.

Mr Revell said Lancashire United took over the bus route from Stagecoach on April 15 2001. He added: "We have new low lying buses and with the speed bumps, which are excessively harsh, on that route we get a lot of damage to our buses. We took off the 300-yard stretch to that route because demand wasn't very high and it would speed up journey times for other passengers."

Coun Burke said: "It's a real shame for the area, there are a lot of pensioners who rely on that service and I know a lot of them aren't very happy. The service from Lancashire United was a good service and it would make more sense to keep an LU bus on there rather than an M&M."

Mr Tuffnell said: "There are a lot of bumps on Pickup Street and I know LU, like ourselves, have had problems with damage caused. We must have gone through at least half-a-dozen springs this year already.

"Unless you are going to give £100,000 I will not put a low lying bus on, they get much more damage than our smaller ones do."

He said that if all goes well they should have a half hourly service running from early morning to early afternoon in eight or nine weeks, but warned that if it was not used they would take it off.

"We used to have this a while back after people called for it, but when we put it on we found that hardly anybody used it and we had to take it off," he added.

David Law, of Hyndburn Council said: "We have public safety to put first and the bumps have been put in as a result of unsafe road conditions so to take them out would endanger people.

"We will be happy to look at specific routes and how they are causing problems and see how we could make them friendlier to buses."