DURHAM County Council is to provide a bus for villagers who will lose their commercial service from Sunday.

Go North-East is axing some routes, amending others and creating new ones in the latest shake-up of its operations in Durham, Chester-le-Street and Derwentside.

The 739 and 740, between Chester-le-Street and Pelton Fell, are among the casualties and the loss would have left people between Burnthouse Bank, at Pelton Fell, and Pelton Lane, in Newfield, with no service.

From Monday, the county's 813 service, run by JSB Travel, will link Pelton Fell Colliery Inn and Newfield with Chester-le-Street, Mondays to Saturdays.

The service will be hourly for most of the day, and there will be an afternoon journey, linking Roseberry Infant and Junior School, to Pelton Fell.

The Chester-le-Street town midibus services to Hilda Park (810), Gibside (811), and North Lodge (812) will also be improved.

They will run every weekday and Saturdays, with a revised timetable, and the 811 will have a new route, restoring bus services to the Chillingham Drive- Warkworth Drive area of Waldridge Park, instead of running via The Avenue.

The council's integrated transport manager, Richard Startup, said : "The changes to Go North-East's services starting this weekend mean that their buses will no longer serve the road from Newfield through Pelton Fell and Burnthouse Bank.

"The action we are taking will ensure that people in this area will continue to have a bus service.

"We are pleased that this has given us an opportunity to develop the other local services, in Chester-le-Street, which have only been running on a limited basis since the loss of Go North-East's local town midibus service in summer 2006."

For timetables, call 0870-6082608, or visit www. traveline.info