A tea dance organiser is desperate to get a bus to drop his fellow dancers off outside Victoria Hall.

Deryck Feather, of Hainworth in Keighley, holds a monthly tea dance at the hall and many of the elderly people who come to the dances have told him they are afraid of walking the distance from the hall to the bus stop.

Without a bus service to drop people outside the hall some people have already stopped coming. Mr Feather said that other weekly-organised tea dances would also benefit from the drop off.

Mr Feather said: "Unfortunately, because of the hall's position, a lot of the Keighley people think it is too far out, especially some of the older ones.

"I would like a bus service to run during the day for elderly people, at convenient times, and I know there are people who would use it.

"It would be an advantage to Keighley. I could even have more dances if the people of Keighley and surrounding districts would attend the hall."

Mr Feather has been campaigning for over five years to get a bus service that drops off at the hall, and in the past had attended SportKeighley meetings to put forward ideas about a bus service.

In 2000 he said a special summer 700 bus had run round Victoria Park, stopping at the hall and leisure centre.

But Mr Feather said he had been told that had been stopped due to objects being thrown at the bus and some of the drivers had been subject to verbal abuse.

On March 1 a SportKeighley meeting was held about the idea of setting up a daytime bus service or using the existing aKtivehoppa, a bus designed to assist young people and people who play sport to get around Keighley, to accommodate the elderly tea dancers.

John Dennis, of SportKeighley, said: "We will help in any way we can in getting a service to the dances, and indeed to promote dancing for all as an excellent activity in general.

"Discussions are ongoing with regard to the Hoppa, which is only funded at present to the end of June, to see if a more integrated and extended service (including daytimes) can be achieved."

Mr Dennis said that he would talk with the regular bus company to see if it was feasible to adjust the current bus route to drop the tea dancers outside the hall and still keep to the timetable.

At the dances, which Mr Feather leads in Keighley, Bingley, Saltaire and Kendal, Keighley has the least members. In Bingley 40 people attend the dances, 30 people attend the dances in Saltaire, 50 in Kendal and only 28 in Keighley. He said the figures showed that people were staying away.