One of the minds behind Cumbria’s newest public transport scheme has spoken of the battle to get the community-run service going.

Wendy Bond, one of the organisers behind the Go Gilsland community transport scheme, said the official opening of the project - which happened on Wednesday - was a “tremendous success”.

“We had the pleasure of hosting Lady Jane Gibson, the chairwoman of the Hadrian’s Wall Partnership to lead the ceremony,” Wendy said.

Work on the project first started shortly after Cumbria County Council was forced to take away their funding of a bus service to Gilsland in 2014, following cuts from central government.

“It was the result of austerity at the end of the day,” Wendy said.

“In areas as rural as Gilsland, we do feel like the government treat us as third-class citizens.”

A spokesman for Cumbria County Council explained: “The county council has not subsidised bus services since 2014/15 due to funding cuts as a result of the government’s austerity programme.

“Bus services in Cumbria are now run on a purely commercial basis – where there is demand and where operators can run a sustainable service, they will run.”

According to Wendy, five years without access to public transport has meant Gilsland residents are unused to once again having access to public transport.

“Getting the scheme going has been immensely difficult,” she said.

“If people in a community who cannot drive have spent five years working out what they can do, and it’s very limited, it takes a long time to undo that.

“One person I was talking to the other day said to me: ‘I just sit here, and I know I can’t get anywhere, and I feel trapped’.”

Wendy also said there had been difficulty in establishing a bank of drivers.

“We are slowly building up a bank of drivers. There were 11 drivers on our books, but we’ve now only got three.

“But we are getting there.

“As a result of the lovely time we had at the official opening on Wednesday, two more people approached me about becoming drivers.

“Once we get more drivers the better our coverage can be. And the more bookings we make the better the deal is that we can make with the drivers.

“We have a lot of tourists who want to use the service already, and a lot of tourists have been using it since it started.

“I think as a general rule, anything that runs in an area as rural as ours will never be properly financially viable.

“We’re in a good position because we can also rely on the visitors we get coming to the area.

“But it might take a little while for local residents to become accustomed to using the service regularly.”