A RURAL bus service made famous by a television documentary could be axed unless private funding can be found to save it.

The Sunday bus service run by the Dales and Bowland Community Interest Company, could be lost unless new, private funding can be found before its last remaining public subsidies begin to run out next year.

North Yorkshire County Council withdrew its subsidies for Sunday services in 2013 and now the West Yorkshire Combined Authority - which currently provides £22,000 a year - has also indicated its intention to phase out their funding from April next year.

The services under threat includes the number 830 Northern Dalesman bus which featured in a slow television documentary All Aboard! The Country Bus, which followed its 40 mile route from Richmond to Ingleton in “real time”.

The programme attracted more than 900,000 viewers in 2016.

A few months later the Dales and Bowland Community Interest Company (CIC) turned to the crowdfunding website JustGiving in a bid to find funding and attract donations from people who use the service and others who appreciated its importance.

At a recent annual meeting of Friends of the Dales, commercial director of the CIC Paul Chattwood, said they were being forced down the road of “going with a begging bowl” to the private sector.

He said: “It means that non-car owners and people from the inner cities, all the very people we should be encouraging to visit the Dales, are being deprived of that opportunity.”

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority says it doesn’t have any public transport remit and would only be able to make one-off payments from its sustainable development fund to help companies get off the ground

It costs £70,000 a year to provide the Sunday and bank holiday services.