DURING the festive period, bus passengers in the West Linton and Biggar faced a series of delays, cancellations and poor services from the 101/2 Stagecoach bus from Dumfries to Edinburgh.

And to combat the transport chaos, a campaign group has been set up to create change.

Stand Up For Our Buses will ask the Traffic Commissioner and Scottish Borders Council to have talks with Stagecoach to improve the service provided.

A spokeswoman for Stand Up for Our Buses, Janet Moxley said: "In the week leading up to Christmas, Stagecoach cancelled a number of services, with others running significantly late.

"This has caused chaos for passengers trying to get to the capital for medical appointments and work as well as people planning Christmas activities.

"The Stagecoach fleet on this route is getting increasingly unreliable, but Stagecoach seem unable or unwilling to run vehicles capable of providing a reliable service. Sure a large, national company like Stagecoach must own enough serviceable vehicles to allow them to run this route!"

"On one of the worst days, the 08:53 from Biggar to Edinburgh and the 10:20 from Edinburgh to Biggar were cancelled completely, and the 10:53 from Biggar to Edinburgh finally turned up at 11:25.

"In addition to late and cancelled services, passengers have been complaining about freezing buses with no heating, and condensing so bad that they were being rained on while inside the bus."

Janet added: "It's more than a little ironic that Stagecoach's advertising included the slogan 'Christmas? Get there by bus!'.

"How are passengers supposed to be able to plan their Christmas travel around this sort of chaos?"

In response to the complaints made by Stand Up For Our Buses, a spokesperson from Stagecoach West Scotland told us: "We recognise that during December, our customers regrettably experienced delays or cancellations on a small number of 101/102 services between Dumfries and Edinburgh, we apologise for the inconvenience caused to our customers during this time.

"We are working closely with our depot in Dumfries as well as local authority partners to resolve the issues as quickly as we can for our customers.

"Operating safe and reliable services is our number one customer priority."