CALLS are being made for a shuttle bus to take council staff living in Yate to the new offices on Badminton Road.

Councillors say a circular ‘hopper’ bus needs to be on the road by the time South Gloucestershire Council’s £32million offices open in April next year.

Cllr Ian Blair, mayor of Yate, said: "Something needs to be done fairly rapidly. Other than walking or cycling anyone living in north Yate cannot get to the offices. Walking or cycling is possible on a nice day but in weather like this it is pretty awful.

"That almost precludes people living in north Yate from working there."

There will be 312 parking spaces at the new offices, with 700 staff working there at any one time. Under the authority’s own Green Travel Plan, employees will not be allocated a parking space if they live within a two mile radius of the building, even if they are car sharing.

Cllr Howard Gawler (Lib Dem, Ladden Brook) said: "I would dearly love a round Yate bus system. We need several small buses running every 15 minutes and extend them to serve Westerleigh, Iron Acton and the surrounding villages.

"It is about getting people around Yate effectively without getting stuck in queues of cars and we don’t want people parking all the way down North Road or in Nibley Lane."

At a meeting about the travel plans organised by Yate Town Council, concerns were raised that the two-mile radius was too widespread and councillors suggested it should be reduced to one mile.

There are also fears that Nibley Lane will be used as a rat-run by staff and that South Avenue, the vacant Swan pub in Yate Shopping Centre and Yate Train Station car park will be used by staff who are not allocated a parking space. Cllr Claire Young (Lib Dem, Westerleigh) said staff who live in the Yate and Chipping Sodbury area would be more likely to use a local bus link to the offices than those travelling to work from further afield.

"You are more likely to persuade people to use short bus services to work than you are people living further away," she said.

The majority of staff who will be based at the offices will come from Kingswood and Longwell Green and the 686 bus service from Kingswood to Wotton-under-Edge has been extended to run every half an hour. From April 1, 2010 a shuttle bus from Emersons Greens and Mangotsfield to Yate Shopping Centre will also be launched.

Cllr Brian Allinson, the council’s executive member for transport, said: ""A great deal of work has been done on building a green transport plan for the new building. It is an ongoing programme and I am very conscious of the concerns."

He added: "We have done quite a lot already to enhance services but that is not the end of it and I hope by the time we move in there our plans will have been accepted by everybody."